Hungarian President Tamás Sulyok has agreed to step down, signing an amendment to the country’s constitution which will end his presidency at midnight on Sunday.
Prime Minister Péter Magyar’s Tisza party had steamrolled the law change through parliament to oust Sulyok – widely seen as a loyalist of former prime minister Viktor Orbán who lost power in April after 16 years.
Sulyok had five days to sign the amendment or risk a protracted constitutional crisis and impeachment proceedings.
He confirmed he would agree to the law change as the deadline passed on Saturday evening, but in a statement accused Magyar’s government of violating the rule of law.
He said the amendment marked a “breaking point in Hungarian constitutional democracy” and said the “core values of a free society… have been trampled underfoot for the sake of political power”.
It marks the latest and most dramatic move by the Tisza government, which saw Sulyok as a puppet of the former government and had pushed for his resignation.
It has swept through major constitutional changes since winning a landslide victory in April.
Orbán had described the amendment as an act of tyranny and called for protests.
Since the April election, Orbán’s party has been in free fall, reeling from the shock defeat. Orbán himself has hardly been seen in public, and refused to take his seat in parliament.
EPA/ShutterstockIn office from 2010 until 2026, Fidesz reshaped the Hungarian state to its own will, and filled supposedly independent state positions with party loyalists using its own two-thirds majority.
The 141 Tisza deputies in parliament gave a standing ovation as the results of the vote passing the amendment were announced on Monday.
After the vote, András Baka, former head of Hungary’s Supreme Court, told the BBC: “I quite agree with the removal of the president.”
Hungary was governed by the rule of law from 1989 to 2010, he argued, after which Fidesz captured state institutions and created an authoritarian state.
“And it is now very difficult to break up a sophisticated authoritarian regime… which was designed to survive even after electoral defeat,” Baka said.