The election of András Baka as president of Hungary cements the change of political era after Orbán

Hungary’s parliament has elected former Supreme Court president András Baka as the country’s new president, marking another important stage in the restructuring of the Hungarian political system after the end of Viktor Orbán’s 16-year rule.

On August 11, 140 lawmakers voted for the 73-year-old jurist, and six voted against. Representatives of the opposition Fidesz did not take part in the vote, protesting against the early termination of the powers of the previous president, Tamás Sulyok. Baka is due to take office officially on August 19.

Baka’s election is above all of political and institutional significance. Hungary’s president does not run the government and does not determine the country’s economic or foreign policy, but can act as a constitutional counterweight to the parliamentary majority and the cabinet of ministers. This function is becoming especially important now, when the party of the prime minister, Péter Magyar, Tisza, holds a constitutional majority in parliament and is carrying out sweeping changes to the institutions formed under Orbán.

Baka fits this political construct well. From 1991 to 2008 he was a judge of the European Court of Human Rights, and in 2009 parliament elected him president of Hungary’s Supreme Court. His mandate was terminated early in 2012 after he publicly criticized the Orbán government’s judicial reforms. The European Court of Human Rights later found a violation of his right of access to a court and of his freedom of expression.

That is why Baka’s return to one of the country’s highest offices after almost 15 years carries clear symbolic meaning. It demonstrates the new authorities’ intention to distance themselves from the institutional model of the Orbán era while making the independence of the judiciary one of the central themes of the political transformation.

“To Hungarian society, this is much more than an ordinary change of president. After sixteen years of dominance by one political force, any large-scale restructuring of state institutions is inevitably perceived differently by society. For supporters of change, it is an opportunity to restore the system of checks and balances, while for a significant part of Fidesz supporters, what is happening may look like political revenge by the new authorities,” believes Oleksandr Poznii, an expert at the Experts Club analytical center and co-founder and director of the research company Active Group.

In Poznii’s view, the key test will be the ability of the new institutions to demonstrate real independence from Péter Magyar’s government.

“Baka’s main task is not to become the president of the winning party. If the new head of state can truly distance himself from the government and act as an arbiter between different political groups, that will be an important signal to society. Otherwise, Hungary risks getting not a dismantling of the previous model of power concentration, but simply a change in the political force that controls this model,” Poznii notes.

The sociologist also draws attention to the high political polarization of Hungarian society. In such a situation, the significance of the presidency is determined not so much by the scope of formal powers as by the trust that different groups of the population place in the head of state.

“In countries with strong political polarization, symbolic institutions can matter far more than the text of the constitution suggests. The president may not run the economy or foreign policy, but he is able either to lower the level of conflict in society or, on the contrary, to become yet another participant in that conflict. That is why for Baka the main measure of success will be not the number of blocked laws, but whether he can be perceived as the president of all Hungarians,” Poznii stressed.

Baka himself said after his election that under the previous authorities the system of checks and balances had effectively stopped working, but stressed that political change must not turn into revenge against supporters of the former government. He also said he intends to represent citizens with different political views.

Hungary is a parliamentary republic, so the real center of executive power lies not in the presidential palace but in the government.

According to the Fundamental Law of Hungary, the president is the head of state, embodies the unity of the nation and is to oversee the democratic functioning of state institutions. At the same time, the president has no executive power of his own and does not run ministries.

However, his powers are broader than purely ceremonial ones. The president signs laws passed by parliament and, before signing, may once return a law to lawmakers for reconsideration. If he considers a document to contradict the Fundamental Law, he may refer it to the Constitutional Court.

After parliamentary elections, the president proposes a candidate for prime minister to parliament. He also formally appoints ministers on the proposal of the head of government, performs a number of personnel and representative functions, and represents the Hungarian state in foreign relations.

Thus the head of state is able to slow down individual decisions of the parliamentary majority or initiate their constitutional review, but cannot independently determine the country’s political course.

The prime minister, by contrast, is the de facto head of the executive branch. The government is the main body of executive power and public administration, and the prime minister determines its general political course. It is the prime minister who forms the government team, directs the work of the cabinet and, through the parliamentary majority, carries out the main budgetary, economic, social and foreign policy decisions.

That is why the key political figure in Hungary remains Péter Magyar, who came to power after Tisza’s victory in the April parliamentary elections. The party won two-thirds of the seats in parliament, ending Orbán’s 16 years of uninterrupted rule.

After coming to power, Magyar began pushing for the replacement of the heads of a number of state institutions linked to the previous system of power. One of the most notable episodes was the early termination of the powers of President Tamás Sulyok.

For the new authorities, Baka’s election is especially symbolic because of his long-standing conflict with the Orbán system. The former Supreme Court president is effectively returning to top-level state politics after the defeat of the political force under which he lost his judicial post.

At the same time, this is precisely where one of the main risks of the new Hungarian political system arises. Tisza has a constitutional majority and thus has exceptionally broad capacity to change laws and institutions. The new authorities must therefore simultaneously dismantle the mechanisms created under Orbán and prove that they are not replacing them with their own party control.

Therein lies the paradox of the new Hungarian construct: Magyar has obtained an extraordinarily strong position thanks to the parliamentary majority, while Baka is to embody the limitation of excessive concentration of power.

For a Ukrainian audience, the Hungarian transformation also has foreign policy significance. After Orbán’s defeat, Budapest’s position toward Ukraine has become less confrontational, although Magyar does not present himself as an unconditional supporter of Kyiv and continues to link some bilateral issues to the situation of the Hungarian minority in Zakarpattia.

The ultimate criterion of a change of political era in Hungary will therefore be not only the departure of personnel from the Orbán years, but also whether the new authorities succeed in building a system of institutions that can function independently of which party controls parliament and the government.