Hungarian parliament votes down proposal to impeach president

Lawmakers rejected a proposal in a secret ballot on Monday to start proceedings to remove President Tamás Sulyok from office.

In a debate on the draft resolution submitted by the opposition Democratic Coalition, Christian Democrat MP Imre Vejkey, the head of parliament’s justice committee, said the committee recommended that parliament against initiating “the obviously baseless … and unworthy proceedings that only served campaign goals”.

He said the opposition parties that submitted the proposal had “put forward a deceitful opinion and came to an incorrect conclusion” regarding two matters.

Vejkey said such proceedings could only be initiated against a president who is found to have intentionally violated the constitution, broken a law or committed a crime. He added, however, that the justice committee had concluded that the allegations in the proposal “are not connected to Tamas Sulyok’s actions as president”. This, he said, ruled out “any basis for references to the intentional violation of the law”.

The lawmaker said the allegation that Sulyok had acted under a conflict of interest by taking his salary as head of the Constitutional Court was also unfounded, arguing that Sulyok suspended his activities as a lawyer during his time on the court and the cases he had worked on earlier were being taken care of by a deputy.