The revelation of a pardon granted in a child sexual abuse case caused a scandal in Hungary.
Some of Hungary’s best-known internet personalities led a demonstration of at least 10,000 demonstrators in Budapest on Friday to demand a change in the country’s political culture, in response to the recent resignation of the conservative president and from the Minister of Justice for a pardon granted in a child sexual abuse case.
Protesters filled the Hungarian capital’s vast Heroes’ Square and called for real reforms to Hungary’s child welfare system and a transformation of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s system of governance.
“I don’t know exactly what we’re going to get at the end of the day”said Zsolt Osváth, a popular online content creator who helped organize the protest. “But it is certain that we will not remain silent any longer and we need to get out of the comfort zone of our computer screens.”
Last week, President Katalin Novák, an ally of Orbán, resigned amid controversy after it was revealed she had granted a presidential pardon to a man who had been jailed for covering up a series of sexual abuses committed against children by the director of a state orphanage.
The pardon shocked Hungarian society and opened fissures within Orbán’s Fidesz party, which has governed the country with a constitutional majority for almost 14 years.
Friday’s expression of popular discontent took root in a segment of society that is often disengaged from politics. The protest organizers included nearly a dozen popular YouTubers and other content creators, who wrote that they were “distraught” by the revelations and that they demonstrated for a “healthy society”.
The organizers, who each have hundreds of thousands of subscribers on YouTube, urged their fellow Hungarians to get out of the“apathy” policy.
The now former Justice Minister Judit Varga, another key Fidesz figure, also resigned her parliamentary seat over her role in approving the pardon.
Ms Varga was supposed to lead the list of Fidesz candidates in the European elections next June.