The Hungarian Parliament has approved the 17th amendment to the constitution.
Prime Minister Péter Magyar says this is a key step that will allow "Orbán's political puppets" to be replaced.
The Parliament has approved the 17th amendment to the constitution with 139 votes in favor and 6 against, making it possible to dismiss the current President of the Republic, Tamás Sulyok . 54 deputies did not participate in the vote.
The constitutional amendment is designed primarily to remove the incumbent president, while also creating a precedent that could enable similar impeachments in the future.
The day after the amendment enters into force, Sulyok's term will end and then Parliament will elect a head of state to serve until the new constitution enters into force, but for no more than five years.
In his speech before the start of the official agenda, Prime Minister Péter Magyar said it would be a betrayal of the Hungarian nation not to touch the Fidesz-drafted constitution, which he described as “the founding document of the Hungarian Cosa Nostra built by Fidesz–KDNP.”
He added that, in his opinion, under Orbán's governments, everything was subordinated to the will and political survival of one man.
He also recalled that when Péter Polt was chief prosecutor, no investigation was launched into the hundreds of billions that disappeared from the MNB, the central bank. As he put it, Polt was as uninterested in this as he was in protecting the constitution, which he now has to deal with as president of the Constitutional Court.
"The constitutional duty is to protect the country from external threats, the Hungarian people from arbitrary power, common property from plunder, freedom of elections from state and secret service interference, children entrusted to the care of the state from their abusers, and state institutions from being used by a party that has lost the elections to maintain its power," the prime minister said.
To justify the president's dismissal, he gave a long list of cases in which Tamás Sulyok had remained silent, including cases where it came to light that police procedures and secret service surveillance had been initiated against IT experts from the Tisza Party on trumped-up charges.
“He should have defended constitutionality when one of its most important foundations was at stake: the principle that the secret services protect the Hungarian state and can never become assistants to the ruling party.”