In Hungary the special legal order could cease to have effect in June, Justice Minister Judit Varga wrote in a post on her social media account on Monday.

She said upon the passage of the special mandate legislation and also thereafter the government stressed that as soon as the epidemic situation allowed they would lift the special legal order. She added that as Prime Minister Viktor Orbán himself said on Friday, the legislative proposal to that effect could be submitted to Parliament already in May, and in Hungary the special legal order could cease to have effect – after a parliamentary debate and the adoption of the law – in June.

Ms. Varga added that in the midst of a pandemic, during the most difficult days of the containment effort, representatives of Hungarian opposition parties “hand in hand with Western European political leaders, liberal mainstream media and well-known satellite NGOs were busy orchestrating an unprecedented, all-out, coordinated attack on our country”.

As part of this, they did not shy away from spreading even the most absurd accusations, discrediting information and fake news, the Justice Minister added, recalling that, among others, they spoke about dictatorship, the closing of Parliament and the imprisonment of journalists.

She added that “meanwhile, the Hungarian Government – using its democratic authorisation – together with the Hungarian people worked hard to minimise the health and economic impacts caused by the virus”.

According to Ms. Varga, while “the systematic spreading of absurd accusations” did much harm to Hungary’s international reputation, “it perhaps had the doubtful advantage of having revealed once again who uses the available opportunities in a state of danger to what end and for whose benefit”.

In her post, the Minister wrote they look forward to the coming days to see “whether those who spread these accusations, who cried ‘dictatorship’ and ‘Nazism’ will at least have it in them to report on reality even if they don’t apologise”.

In her post, Ms. Varga quoted the poet Sándor Petőfi’s lines: “Time is right, and it decides what is not”.

(Ministry of Justice/MTI)