BUDAPEST: Hungarian President Pal Schmitt, a close ally of incumbent Prime Minister Viktor Orban, caved in to mounting pressure to quit Monday and duly resigned after being stripped of his 1992 doctorate title over a plagiarism row last week.
“Under the constitution, the president must represent the unity of the Hungarian nation,” Schmitt admitted before Parliament. “I have unfortunately become a symbol of division; therefore I feel it is my duty to leave my position. I feel it is my duty to surrender my mandate as president.”
Schmitt, 69, and a former Olympic fencing gold medallist, leaves the ceremonial post less than two years after he took over the presidency back in June 2010.Rumours of his impending resignation first surfaced on Friday, a day after Budapest’s Semmelweis University stripped him of his PhD, but Schmitt clung on insisting that he could “see no link” between the plagiarism affair and a need for him to resign.
The university last week found that the president had copied, “word-for-word.” large passages of another writer’s work in his thesis on the history of the Olympic Games.Addressing Parliament onMonday, Schmitt insisted he had done “honest work” and claimed that the university had “no right” to strip him of his doctorate, adding that he might take legal action to get it back. He also said he would prepare a new doctorate on sports and the environment.
Opposition parties welcomed Schmitt’s departure, but hinted that a change in the way the president is chosen - at present he or she is elected by Parliament and not by the Hungarian people - might be necessary. “The presidential honour has been so greatly undermined that a mere change of presidents will not do,” said far-right Jobbik leader Vona Gabor. “The only way to restore confidence is to have immediate (direct) presidential elections.”
Others interpreted Schmitt’s departure as a sign of Prime Minister Orban’s waning power. “This should be a sign for the prime minister as well that his will [and] his power is not limitless. The people’s backbone is stronger than the PM’s will,” maintained Socialist party leader Attila Mesterhazy. “Your leader is not immune to mistakes, and that sets limits to your powers as well,” he told the deputies of Orban’s centre-right Fidesz party, which currently holds an overwhelming majority in Parliament.
Since coming to power in a landslide election win back in April 2010, Orban’s government has installed close allies in key posts such as the presidency, the state audit office as well as the judiciary.
The prime minister has remained largely reticent over the Schmitt debate, telling public radio Friday that the president alone must take a decision on stepping down. In Germany last year, the then defence minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg was also forced to resign over allegations of a plagiarised doctoral thesis.