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The secret history of the 2018 elections in 84 color pages.
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On Wednesday morning, Péter Szijjártó told 444 that he knew no more about József Szájer’s police case in Brussels than was reported in the press, nor did he know that he had resigned from the EP.
The Fidesz MEP violated local curfew restrictions on Friday night to attend a gay sex party. When the party was interrupted by a police raid, József Szájer tried to escape, but was caught on the street and found drugs in his bag.
The raid took place on Friday, but the Belgian press only reported it on Tuesday. If Péter Szijjártó did not know about this before, then there may be serious problems with the Hungarian response level. Namely, Szijjártó is in charge of the Information Office, the Hungarian secret service that conducts civil intelligence, and is responsible for the affairs of Hungarian diplomats and other important people working abroad, among other things.
The first point of the law that defines the tasks of the MA begins as follows: “It acquires, analyzes, evaluates and transmits the information necessary for government decisions that is foreign or of foreign origin and can be used for the security of the nation.” – The Mouth case is exactly that information. The pro-government press began a lively speculation that Szájer had been “deceived to the core”, “wanted to organize” but “had not been disappointed” and that was the origin of the clumsy process against him. If this suspicion is taken seriously, it is also claimed that IH is not working properly.
Although József Szájer has a diplomatic passport, he is still not one of the people who should be strictly protected and controlled by the MA, because he holds an elected position, he is not a diplomat of the Hungarian state and he did not even have to be examined. But it would still be one of the typical tasks of the MA to report suspicious cases to a government of a person working abroad in a high-level political position. Not in itself, because you go to hot parties or maybe do drugs, but because you can be blackmailed if you have shameful privacy secrets. As one national security expert put it, “in such cases, the problem is not the person who openly assumes his homosexuality, but the one who keeps it a secret because he may have risks.
Assuming that József Szájer has never been to such parties and has not lived a secret life in Brussels, the situation is still very strange. According to the national security experts we interviewed, the allied bodies of an allied country tend to speak up when their police initiate a process against an important person. Like Hungary, Belgium is a member of NATO and the EU, which means it is one of the closest allies. If in this case the Belgian services did not notify the Hungarians, it was an unusual and extremely hostile gesture from them, pointing to serious political tensions between the two countries. If, on the contrary, the Hungarians were informed that a process had been initiated against a citizen who certified himself with a diplomatic passport, it was incomprehensible that the Office kept this secret from Péter Szijjártó.
It is also generally unrealistic that the leaders of the government and Fidesz did not know anything. It is conceivable, of course, that no one inaugurated the chancellor in time, but it would have been quite strange if Viktor Orbán, the leader of Fidesz and the government, had not known about Friday’s raid. He has known Szájert closely since the 1980s and, as the most influential Fidesz politician in the EP, he may have played a prominent role in handling disputes between the EP and Hungary. Due to the veto of the EU budget in Budapest, its role has become especially important these days. That Orbán did not want to know why Szájer resigned in such a situation seems completely unrealistic.
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