Pegasus case: Governing parties stayed away from the National Security Committee meeting ?

A meeting of parliament’s national security committee, scheduled to be held behind closed doors to discuss issues around the Pegasus spyware, turned out to be lacking quorum as deputies of the ruling parties stayed away.

János Stummer, the head of the committee for opposition Jobbik, Socialist MP Zsolt Molnár and LMP’s Péter Ungár had talks with Interior Minister Sándor Pintér, who was to participate in the aborted meeting, and informed him that the committee would launch a comprehensive probe into cases when the body had been asked to exempt certain devices from public procurement procedures. Stummer said that if such an appeal had come before the committee in connection with the spyware, “we will find evidence”.

Stummer also said he would convene the committee for the first day of parliament’s autumn session, and proposed setting up a fact-finding investigation in connection with Pegasus.

Referring to earlier press reports suggesting that the government had used Pegasus to spy on journalists, politicians, and other public figures, Stummer said that

“the government pretends as if there were no scandal but only scare-mongering, while they are using every means to avoid political responsibility”.

He added that ruling Fidesz and the allied Christian Democratic deputies’ absence from the meeting was “sabotage”.

Stummer noted that a parliamentary fact-finding committee could not be set up in the case since the Regional Prosecutor’s Office of Investigations of Budapest was investigating the matter, but said that his committee’s opposition members would find out “if such a software was purchased in recent years, and if so, who, when, for what purpose and under what licence had used it”. He added that it must be ensured that such spyware is not applied in future as “it has no place in a country governed by the rule of law”.