Hungary’s president has signed a constitutional amendment that ends his own time in office, turning a legal formality into a public rebuke of the country’s new political order.
Tamás Sulyok signed the seventeenth amendment to Hungary’s Fundamental Law on Saturday, after announcing the decision in a Facebook address. Under the amendment, the sitting president’s mandate ends the day after the measure takes effect.
Sulyok said he signed because refusing to do so would itself have been unlawful. But he sharply criticised the provision that forces him out.
“With a single sentence this amendment terminates the mandate of the sitting President of the Republic,” Sulyok said. He called it a “grave and shameful” example of abuse of political power.
The amendment also changes the structure of several Hungarian institutions. It introduces a 12-year, or three-term, limit on parliamentary mandates, sets a maximum age of 70 for constitutional judges, and changes rules for the leadership of the Kúria, Hungary’s Supreme Court, and the National Judicial Office.
Ágnes Forsthoffer, the Speaker of the National Assembly, will serve as interim president until parliament elects a new head of state. The arrangement will remain in place until a new constitution enters into force, but for no longer than five years.
Prime Minister Péter Magyar had urged Sulyok and other senior officeholders to resign after the Tisza Party won a two-thirds parliamentary majority in the April 12 election, accusing them of acting as allies of the previous Orbán government.
Parliament adopted the amendment on July 13 by 139 votes to 6, with no abstentions. Fidesz and KDNP lawmakers boycotted the sitting.
“The exclusive responsibility for this decision lies with the power that amended the constitution,” Sulyok said.
