PM Orban told off Minister of Defense Hende, who resigned immediately in anger

According to index.hu, Prime Minister Viktor Orban called for the further acceleration of the fence construction at the National Security Cabinet meeting on Monday, meanwhile he expressed his dissatisfaction about the current state of work. Previously, Orban marked August 31 as the date of completion of the 175km-long fence, but only the temporary barbed wire has been completed so far.

Minister of Defense Csaba Hende, however, resented the criticism, having felt he provided the maximum expected from him in the past two months in order to the Army meet the tight deadline. So after the Prime Minister’s telling-off, the Defense Minister, who had been breached in self-esteem, announced his resignation. This was immediately accepted by Viktor Orban in the heat of debate.

Then the Prime Minister decided right away that he appointed Istvan Simicsko, current Sports Affairs Secretary of State in Hende’s place. The personal change came so quickly and unexpectedly that Simicsko had not been notified about it before releasing the MTI (Hungarian News Agency) news.

The Minister exchange caused a lot of speculations in the papers.

According to the pro-government Magyar Idok (Hungarian Times), the slow construction of the fence was one of the reasons, the other one was that Hende could not break down the resistance of the General Staff, which did not considered an acceptable solution to deploy soldiers without enabling armed service at the borders.

According to the newspaper Magyar Nemzet (Hungarian Nation), not only the current situation, but several cumulative reasons played a role in that the Prime Minister replaced Hende. Among these, there can be diplomatic and private reasons as well.

The sources of Nepszabadsag saw “strong impatience” as the main reason of the leaving, but it is also not ruled out a new expectation arose on the Army, which Hende felt he had been unable to meet.

based on the article of index.hu
translated by BA

Photo: MTI

Source: http://index.hu