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In Orbán’s first government, the career of István Stumpf, who headed the chancellery, began in the state party system. According to his own confession, he was about to become a priest, but in the end he chose a secular career: in 1982 he graduated from the Eötvös Loránd University Faculty of Law, and in 1985, encouraged by Mihály Bihari, he obtained a second degree in sociology.
From Ménesi út to Kossuth tér
In the eighties he came into contact with the politicians who still run Fidesz: in 1983 he was the founding director of the university college, of which Viktor Orbán and his wife, Anikó Lévai, Gábor Fodor, Lajos Simicska and László Kövér were members. After 1989, the school adopted the name of István Bibó, a legal philosopher. In the 1980s, he was the editor and chief editor of the Revista de Fin de Siglo, and in 1991 he founded the School of Politics of the End of the Century, from which the Escuela de Fin de Siglo The Research Institute of the Century grew later.
He continued his studies at the Council of Europe Summer Course in Leadership and Languages in London in 1989, and in 1990 he was a German Marshall Fellow in the United States. In 1992-93, he worked in public policy at Harvard and George Washington Universities. He has been a political science candidate since 1996, and in 2008 he qualified in political science. Since 2015 he has been a university professor.
From 1987 he became a scientific researcher at the Institute of Political Science of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, then from 1989 until the dissolution of the organization, he was president of the National Council of Hungarian Youth Organizations and vice president of the Patriotic People’s Front. He also had family ties to the state political elite: his wife was forced to resign due to the Dunagate scandal, the daughter of István Horváth, the Interior Minister, whom they married in 1983 and had four children.
For three years after the regime change, Árpád Göncz, Youth Policy Advisor, was the first President of the Republic, and between 1994 and 2002 he was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Soros Foundation.
After the 1998 elections, he became Chancellor of the first Orbán government until 2002. Stumpf was the first to lead the post of prime minister not as secretary of state but as minister. Developed the mirror reporting system in the Prime Minister’s Office. The bottom line is that each government ministry and department had a separate person in charge at the chancery.
Since 2002 he has been president of the Fin de Siglo Foundation.
Humming and loud disgust
István Stumpf, together with Mihály Bihari, was elected by Parliament on July 23, 2010 as a member of the Constitutional Court. His nomination and later election were harshly criticized from the opposition side. Critics have argued that Stumpf’s academic work and research did not focus on public law but on political science, and he was not qualified in law but in political science.
The former chancellor was believed to be the deputy governor of the governing parties in the body and would try to tilt decisions in a direction favorable to Fidesz.
The last constitutional judge, who served his nine-year term, thoroughly refuted the skeptics. He voted to pass a law retroactively imposing a 98 percent tax on blatantly high severance pay, but he also supported a decision declaring the transitional provisions of the Basic Law unconstitutional. He also did not receive a good score for noting as a Judge Judge the decision to annul the pre-electoral registration, and then receiving a series of cases related to the legal status of religious organizations and the request for data of public interest.
Sometimes he was glad to let go of a politically percussive phrase. For example, at a conference in the fall of 2012 at the Heritage Foundation’s Conservative Research Institute, based in Washington, he said:
the Constitutional Court is not afraid to be a determined and vigilant defender of the freedoms of Hungarians if the parliament exceeds its constitutional limits, and the court will not be afraid to do so while I am there.
At first, his demonstrations and resolutions of the Constitutional Court provoked a humming, but then a strong discontent on the part of the government, and some even branded him a traitor to Fidesz.
Photo: Lajos Soós / MTI
The numbers don’t lie
Open conflict erupted in the spring of 2013, when he declared at another conference that a two-thirds majority in Parliament
exceeded certain constitutional standards,
then the glass is full. László Kövér, Speaker of the Chamber, reacted bitterly to the statements of his former roommate, saying that although István Stumpf was nominated as a constitutional judge by Fidesz, he was never a member of the party and “Without the autonomous and impartial jurisprudence that it represents”.
As for his nine years on the Constitutional Court, Stumpf was an institution in the institution. In the early 2010s, he was still working with the old constitutional judges, whom he metaphorically described as: “I was the last to see Lenin”. His role on the board has changed a lot over the years:
At first he received large-scale meat cutting issues, but then he had to deal with the grater.
The numbers do not lie: while in 2011 41 cases (26 of which were closed with substantive decisions) had the Judge-Rapporteur, in 2018 there were only 21 cases with 9 substantive decisions. And what is more revealing: in 2011 he identified better with the majority opinion of the old mixed identity body, since he wrote only 7 dissenting opinions and 4 parallel justifications, while in 2018 he had no less than 20 dissenting opinions. and 18 parallel justifications.
Looking back on my career, I have rather built institutions that have created opportunities for each generation to carry out its own culture.
He told Arsboni online magazine in the spring of 2018.
In my opinion, these are connected to Hungarian society in a much broader way than a party. I am not a power politician, nor do I like those who think in a dimension about power and politics. I don’t believe in purely interest-driven politics, value-oriented action should be a measure of the performance of all politicians. It takes real political talent to strike a balance between the two. Finding a balance between value and interest is a very difficult challenge because they always collide. The ten commandments of the freedom-loving man in István Bibó gave me the most important guide for my public roles.
Trouble in the royal court
Although he trusted him, the ruling parties did not rename him a constitutional judge in the summer of 2019. Over the past year and a half, he has regressed somewhat. This, of course, did not mean that he sometimes did not come up with a scathing and critical comment of the government. In September 2019, for example, he gave a fairly comprehensive lecture at the Institute of Political Science on the institutional structure and system of governance. As explained,
The Hungarian public law system still has the possibility of a semi-presidential transformation, but in its content, the presidential government is already underway.
Whereas previously parliament voted on the government program, today the prime minister can determine government policy without any control. This position has never been stronger since the regime change.
Referring to his previous work, he announced that with the establishment of the Prime Minister’s Office and the elevation of Antal Rogán
A fault arose in the center of power, problems arose in the royal court and this situation was untenable for a long time.
But he didn’t skimp on the legislation either:
In Hungary, after 2010, it could easily have been that the government invented something on Friday, and by Monday it was already promulgated or enshrined in the constitution. In our case, essentially nothing limits the power of two-thirds in constitutional reform, there is no eternity clause or other guarantee rule.
Stephen, welcome aboard again!
After this, it is a miracle that Viktor Orbán thought of him when he was looking for a suitable person to coordinate government tasks related to the change in the higher education model and the operation of the new maintenance model. The decision seems surprising, especially in light of the demonstrations of the students of the University of Theater and Film Arts (SZFE) and the protests against the change of the university model.
However, the Prime Minister did not leave it to chance, he knew exactly that what is needed now is not a mechanized shooting officer, but a black belt mediator who is well known in university circles and also feels like in home in the world. of higher education.
Welcome back. The future of universities The future of Hungary. The most important program for the coming years is the modernization of the universities. Work that requires a whole person. I agreed with István Stumpf, who promised to coordinate the change in the higher education model. Stephen, welcome back on board!
– Viktor Orbán said in his Facebook post.
According to the government resolution published in this year’s 14th issue of Magyar Közlöny, as of February 1 for two years, István Stumpf will be the government commissioner who will coordinate government tasks related to the change in the higher education model and the operation of the new maintainer model. . The work of the government commissioner, assisted by a secretariat on Monday, is led by the prime minister.
(Cover image: István Stumpf, constitutional judge, will deliver a speech at the founding ceremony of the new Sárospatak gym on June 8, 2017 in the School Garden managed by the Reformed School. Photo: János Vajda / MTI)
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