New President András Baka could stand up firmly to Péter Magyar – so why is the opposition attacking him so viciously?

On the basis of his professional record and tenure in high office, András Baka, who is due to be elected president today, may well take a hard line against Péter Magyar and his government, just as he did not hide his criticisms during the consolidation of Viktor Orbán’s power in 2010–11. That, indeed, is why he was removed at the time. Analyses suggest he could provide a serious counterweight to the government in defence of democratic institutions – should that prove necessary – yet the opposition is still attacking him vehemently and dredging up unsavoury episodes from his past.

The promise of the presidency

Hungary is a parliamentary republic, so the president’s role is largely ceremonial, with political power exercised by the prime minister and the cabinet he appoints. If Péter Magyar and his allies intend to change this, they have not made much of it so far, merely stating that the future president should be elected by the people rather than by parliament.

This is an old demand, but it could also upend the current constitutional order. A president with a direct popular mandate would inevitably wield more power than one appointed by a parliamentary majority. The emphasis could shift from representation towards genuine decision-making competences.

A president who brought down Orbán

Despite the above, previous presidents have managed to play a part even in party disputes: László Sólyom clearly took a stand against Ferenc Gyurcsány and the Socialist government when it emerged that they had won the 2006 election through fraud. By contrast, the presidents elected by Fidesz after 2010 did whatever Viktor Orbán wanted: they assisted Fidesz’s governance.

Trouble arose when President Katalin Novák granted a pardon to Endre Kónya, an assistant to the director of the Bicske child-abuse case; the scandal did not stop at Sándor Palace but spilled over into the Karmelita, forcing Orbán to act immediately. He dismissed Novák and replaced her with Tamás Sulyok. Yet the problems that surfaced at that point ultimately buried Orbán himself.

After Tisza’s victory, Péter Magyar immediately called on Sulyok to resign; when he refused, the government sent him packing via the 17th constitutional amendment, which Sulyok – despite his misgivings – signed. That is how we arrived at today’s presidential election, in which Tisza’s candidate, András Baka, could become the eighth president in modern Hungary’s history.

Baka stood up to Orbán – and may well do the same to Magyar

Baka was formerly president of the Supreme Court, removed by Viktor Orbán’s two-thirds majority at the start of 2012 precisely because he criticised the swift, ill-considered, one-sided legislation that favoured Fidesz. He also warned that, under the new system, the head of the National Office for the Judiciary, Tünde Handó, had been granted excessive, opaque and unchecked power.

Similar criticisms can be expected of him vis-à-vis Péter Magyar, should the same patterns recur. Yet Magyar is himself prone to rapid decisions, even affecting the public-law system: he once, in a spontaneous moment, offered the presidency to the chess world champion Judit Polgár, who declined; Magyar’s support then fell by several points as a result.

András Baka worked for 17 years at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, after which László Sólyom nominated him to head the Supreme Court. His path to the post was not straightforward: in 2008 and later he lost several rounds of parliamentary voting, but on 22 June 2009, with the support of both the Hungarian Socialist Party and Fidesz, he was elected by 309 votes to 36.

“He attacked his own country”, says Fidesz

After his removal, Baka turned to Strasbourg, and in 2016 the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Hungary had violated Baka’s freedom of expression and had unlawfully dismissed him from office. The court said the measure could also have had a chilling effect on other Hungarian judges. Yet, according to János Lázár, then minister heading the Prime Minister’s Office, Baka had “attacked” his own country by going to the European Court of Human Rights.

Fidesz (and Mi Hazánk) are attacking Baka again now, claiming he is the heir of the communist “blood judges” who once sentenced the 1956 revolutionaries and acquitted the paramilitaries. The Táta shooting of 26 October 1956 was led by a captain named János Korbely; after the volley three people lay dead, including the leader of the insurgents, who had been trying to seize the local police station.

In 2001, the Hungarian court sentenced Korbely to five years’ imprisonment for crimes against humanity (not murder, as that statute of limitations had already expired); the former captain appealed to Strasbourg, and the court ruled 11–6 that the Hungarian judiciary had misinterpreted the principle of legality. According to the 2008 judgment, the Hungarian courts had misapplied categories of international law, because the Táta incident was not a systematic and widespread attack against the civilian population, and the insurgent leader died with a weapon in his hand.

Baka voted with the majority – wrongly, according to the present-day Fidesz. Back then, in 2008 and 2009, when they supported his election to head the Supreme Court, they presumably did not think so. Baka ended up at the helm of the very Supreme Court that upheld the original Korbely judgment, meaning the former captain had to go to prison.

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The attacks continue

Baka remained an active judge thereafter. In 2017, his panel ruled that tao subsidies constituted public funds, prompting János Lázár to attack him sharply. These tao subsidies were how Orbán-aligned entrepreneurs helped sports organisations close to them, although they sought to obstruct their transparency in every possible way.

He is currently in the opposition’s crosshairs because, in 2010–11, as head of the Supreme Court, he did not support decisions related to police excesses in 2006 that went beyond normal judicial proceedings and remedies, and which, due to some elementary popular demand, sought to favour victims of protests and street fights over the paramilitaries.

He criticised Sulyok sharply

This spring, at the Sorbonne, Baka criticised the rule of law under the Orbán system, comparing it to the socialist order of the 1970s. He argued that, because the separation of powers had been weakened, the courts could no longer properly fulfil their braking and controlling role.

Another twist to the nomination is that Baka himself previously joined the appeal signed by 42 intellectuals urging the resignation of Tamás Sulyok, the president elected by Fidesz. According to commentary, Baka’s person thus represents both the promise of restoring rule-of-law institutions and the possibility of a head of state who would not necessarily be an automatic ally of whichever prime minister is in office.

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