Hungary: Viktor Orban embarrassed by the escapades of MP Jozsef Szajer

Viktor Orban tries to extinguish the fire in his ranks after the discovery of the Brussels escapades of one of his relatives, the MEP of Fidesz, Jozsef Szajer. “What our colleague Jozsef Szajer has done does not correspond to the values ​​of our political community,” he said. We will not forget and refute his thirty years of work, but his action is not acceptable and cannot be defended. After what happened, he made the only right decision by resigning from the European Parliament with an apology and quitting Fidesz. We have taken note of his decision. A lost sheep, in short.

The embarrassment was great within the Hungarian power when discovering the account of the mad night of Jozsef Szajer, Friday November 27. The MP was participating in what appears to be a gay orgy in central Brussels when the police, alerted by neighbors, intervened to enforce the restrictions amid the pandemic. Jozsef Szajer then tried to escape through the gutter. Caught up by the police, he was taken to his home. He tried unsuccessfully to assert his diplomatic immunity. In his backpack, the police say they found drugs, which he denies. Two other diplomats were participating in what has been described as an orgy involving around 20 people, including a woman.

An anti-LGBT figure

Sunday, while the case was not yet heard, Jozsef Szajer has let it be known that he is leaving politics without too many explanations, other than “personal reasons”, and announces to David Sassoli, the President of the European Parliament, that his resignation will take effect from 1^is January. Monday, the Belgian press revealed the substance of the case.

For Viktor Orban, it was a serious blow at a painful time for Hungary which faces pressure from 25 Member States, very unhappy with the veto imposed by Budapest and Warsaw against the recovery plan and the long-term European budget. A serious blow, because the sexuality of Jozsef Szajer totally contradicts its public positions in favor of the Christian family in the traditional sense.

In the sphere of Viktor Orban, Jozsef Szajer is not just anyone. He had been the architect of the Hungarian Constitution of 2012 who had sanctified marriage between a man and a woman and made the national representation accountable to God. In short, Szajer is a figure of the Hungarian moral order and his tartuferia undermines the moral credit of his political family. Some, in Hungary, went so far as to imagine that the German secret services were no stranger to the outbreak of the affair to weaken the Hungarian position …

Discredit resonates on his wife

Jozsef Szajer is the husband of Tunde Hando, former magistrate and head of the Hungarian National Office of Justice. His appointment to this high post of the judiciary had been controversial, in particular because of the piston that Szajer had been able to obtain in view of his proximity to Viktor Orban… The escapades of her husband, Mrs. Tunde Hando is not responsible for them. But dishonor necessarily weakens its reference position. There too, it is a bad blow received by Orban.

Ultimately, this story, under vaudevillesque aspects, remains sad, because Jozsef Szajer’s sexuality should never have been revealed to the public, even though it does not conform to his political ideas. In this case, he simply broke the rules of Belgian confinement. Police did not respond to the fact that drugs were in his backpack.

Already Jörg Haider …

This is not the first time that political leaders have been caught in contradiction between their words and their customs. The late Jörg Haider, the leader of the Austrian far right (the BZÖ), had voted several times against the recognition of homosexual rights. The circumstances of his death revealed his bisexuality (he was married to Claudia Haider). He had spent the last hours getting drunk in a gay bar in Klagenfurt and subsequently lost control of his car. Moved to tears, Stephen Petzner, his closest political adviser, then revealed to be the late leader’s lover and was forced to quit the presidency of the party he had taken over behind Haider.

Manners evolve over time. The BZÖ admitted that homosexuality was not uncommon in its ranks and, between 2013 and 2015, had a young leader, Gerald Grosz, who claimed this sexual orientation.