Fidesz initiating debate on recent court rulings

Budapest, January 31 (MTI) – Governing Fidesz is initiating a debate in parliament’s justice committee of two court rulings last week, a Fidesz MP said at a press conference on Sunday.

The committee will discuss the acquittal of all 15 suspects in a case involving Hungary’s worst environmental disaster, a flood of industrial sludge, and a suspended prison sentence handed down to the capital’s former Socialist deputy mayor, Miklos Hagyo, on charges of embezzlement.

Fidesz MP Szilard Nemeth said most people are rightfully incensed by the acquittal and the suspended sentence.

Fidesz respects the “liberal requirement of judicial independence” but it also wants to enforce the democratic requirements of transparency and accountability, he added.

The committee debate is necessary to determine what is happening in Hungary’s judiciary, he said. How can a “corrupt Socialist politician” get away with it, and why is nobody responsible for the ten deaths caused by the sludge flood, he asked.

Fidesz MPs will discuss these questions at a meeting next week, after which time they could be brought before the justice committee, Nemeth said.

In a statement released late Sunday, Socialist MP Gergely Barandy said his party had told Fidesz to “get off the independent judiciary” and instead sack the person “most responsible for trials that have run aground”: Peter Polt, the chief public prosecutor. Neither the courts nor the law bear the responsibility for the failure of conceptual trials of prosecutors acting on the political orders of Fidesz, he added.

Source: http://mtva.hu/hu/hungary-matters