r/worldnews • u/bloomberg bloomberg.com • 7h ago
Behind Soft Paywall Hungary to Amend Constitution to Oust President, Magyar Says
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-01/hungary-to-amend-constitution-to-oust-president-magyar-says166
u/bloomberg bloomberg.com 7h ago
From Bloomberg News reporter Zoltan Simon:
Hungary will amend the constitution to oust President Tamas Sulyok, Prime Minister Peter Magyar said after meeting the head of state in Budapest.
Magyar spoke on Monday, hours after a May 31 deadline he set for Sulyok’s resignation expired. The president on Sunday had ruled out resigning, citing what he described as his allegiance to local and European constitutional norms that required him to stay on.
Magyar won a landslide election on April 12 on a vow to dismantle Viktor Orban’s increasingly authoritarian and corrupt system. During the campaign, he pledged to oust Orban loyalists, including Sulyok, top justices and prosecutors, whom he had accused of having failed to protect the country’s democracy.
104
u/flubluflu2 3h ago
This is exactly what Biden should have done in his four years.
76
u/Mopman43 3h ago
He never remotely had the votes to amend the constitution.
53
u/Cheapdronewithboom 2h ago
Repubs issue EO's like they're royal decrees and Dems go along with it. Yet Dems can't perform a criminal investigation of a live attempted coup lol
20
u/MaybeAlice1 2h ago
Turns out when your goals require congress to just not do anything, they’re actually quite easy to accomplish. It’s when you actually need congress to act that things are hard.
Honestly, both sides have kinda been just doing things by executive order. You can’t get anything done really with the way the senate presently operates (there hasn’t been the will to find the consensus position since like Bush 2 maybe earlier). So you pass the budget by reconciliation and then do shit by regulation and EO. Nobody wants to pull the trigger on dismantling the filibuster completely because that really breaks the senate.
The political system has been broken for a long while. Trump has just taken it to the extreme.
•
u/ErickAllTE1 1h ago
Nobody wants to pull the trigger on dismantling the filibuster completely because that really breaks the senate.
Plenty want it gone, they just want it gone when their side has control. The corporate dems and establishment republicans want to keep it to maintain power.
•
u/chargernj 12m ago
It doesn't "break the Senate". The filibuster isn't law and it's not in the Constitution. It's a rule that they all agree to uphold. Getting rid of the fillibuster restores the Senate to what the Founders intended.
•
u/onebyamsey 4m ago
I think it really comes down to the fact that when backed into a corner, dems will give in, but republicans would start a civil war before giving in
3
u/flubluflu2 2h ago
tRump hasn't had the votes to do some of the things he's done yet he's done them.
15
•
u/live-the-future 52m ago
What, are you implying that the rule of law actually applies to Dear Leader Trump? /s
3
u/meanfish 1h ago
He didn’t need to. It’s shockingly easy to amend the Hungarian constitution (one of the things that led to Orban’s rise), so amending it is the easiest path for the reforms Magyar is looking to implement.
I’m not sure what levers would’ve worked for Biden, but he didn’t try using any of them. He naïvely thought his reasonableness combined with fixing the economy would be enough to pull us back from MAGA extremism as a country.
•
u/live-the-future 53m ago
The US constitution is exceptionally hard to amend, by design. That's really not a realistic option for Biden or any other president.
•
u/SkittlesAreYum 1h ago
Can you describe how Biden would have done this?
•
u/dmart71 1h ago
By ruling by decree, which 99% of people are actually fine with as long as it suits their personal opinion.
•
•
u/live-the-future 44m ago
Unfortunately, nearly every US president going back at least a century, has tried (and usually succeeded) to expand presidential power. Supporters are all for it, and those of the other party either don't have the votes to stop it, or go along with it looking forward to the day their guy is in office. I remember Obama remarking at the end of his 2nd term how he feared he was leaving a "loaded gun" for Trump in terms of expanded presidential powers.
Of course 2nd-term Trump has gone full tilt on presidential powers, stacking the Supreme Court and agencies all through gov't. I really hope the next Dem president will dial things back a bit (or a lot), but honestly, I can't see them voluntarily relinquishing that kind of power. "But I'll use my power for good," they'll say. Just like they all say.
People today really need to read more Tolkien and Orwell. So many lessons on power need to be re-learned.
3
u/SunsetHippo 3h ago
Today I learned that a country with a Prime Minister can also have a President. I mean I figured it was possible, I just thought the Prime Minister filled just about every governmental role a president had
7
5
u/jtim2 2h ago
France, Israel, and Russia, too. I'm no expert, but a president in parliamentary systems, broadly speaking, fills the role of the crown in parliamentary countries with no monarch. They can often dismiss parliament, give parties a chance to form a government, etc.
It's a rough comparison, but I think the closest American equivalent is the Vice President - some small legislative roles plus a number of ceremonial and contingent roles.
13
u/fhota1 2h ago
A fair few of them do. Who does what varies a lot between countries though, e.g. in Ireland President is a largely ceremonial role while in France the President is more powerful than the Prime Minister
4
u/SunsetHippo 2h ago
interesting. Now I am in no place to question whether or not this is effective or not (Im an american, I have no right to judge anyone's politics in this current year)
4
u/Putraenus_Alivius 2h ago
About half of all parliamentary democracies are republics. Germany, Ireland, Italy, Finland, India, etc. Their presidents are mostly ceremonial though some like France's hybrid regime has a powerful President as well as a powerful Prime Minister.
4
u/Brodyonyx 2h ago
It’s usually a distinction between Head of State and Head of Government. The head of State tends to be the symbolic, public face of the country and the head of Government actually does the day to day administration, passing of laws, etc.
This works out very differently across countries though.
Commonwealth countries like Canada and Australia have the British monarch as their Head of State, though the King’s actual power is almost nonexistent. The Prime Minister’s of those countries hold all the power and are the public face of those nations.
Meanwhile France has a President who is Head of State and the more powerful position, having the power to appoint the Prime Minister, the head of government, to pass his agenda.
3
u/Nurhaci1616 2h ago
The example of a "Prime Minister" country you likely have in your head is the UK; and many of your further guesses would also be constitutional monarchies and not republics. With that in mind, it's not surprising that you never really thought too hard about it.
Really the actual difference is simply a constitutional protocol one: in the Parliamentary style system, the Head of Government is the power player while the Head of State tends to execute mostly ceremonial power, rubber stamping whatever the government does. In the American system, this is basically flipped, to where the Head of State is the main guy and the Head of Government largely exists to enact their agenda in government. The president (/monarch) theoretically has many of the same powers in both, but in the American system the balance of practical power is more weighted towards them than in parliamentary systems.
-228
u/BeatTheMarket30 7h ago
Nobody should be ousting president unless they broke the constitution. Constitution should be amended so that the next president is elected directly by people.
30
u/thecomicguybook 3h ago
This guy was the head of the Constitutional Court that did Fidesz's bidding in eroding democracy, and then he rubber-stamped everything that was put in front of him by a criminal government. Not a word about all the abuses, all the hate, the child abuse scandal.
Then Magyar won and suddenly he was concerned about rule of law, rhetoric, etc. He needs to go.
Also the people literally don't want him, he doesn't have a mandate, he fell into the job because the previous president was forced to resign due to a child abuse pardon scandal. The mandate is with Tisza, and Magyar gave him ample opportunity to resign with some semblance of dignity. He's committed to being an obstructionist lackey, so he will be removed.
And don't you worry, there will be constitutional changes about how these things work in Hungary.
9
u/HappiestIguana 3h ago edited 3h ago
previous president was forced to resign due to a child abuse pardon scandal
Boy that actually sounds nice. America could learn a thing or two.
258
u/dead97531 7h ago
Since Tisza has voluntarily given up the rule by decree system that Orbán has used for the past 5+ years, it will take about a month to make the necessary changes to remove every single Orbán puppet, not just the president.