Hungary Elects a President Who Was Once Removed from Power by the Opposition
Hungary's parliament elected András Baka, a 73-year-old former head of the Supreme Court, as president on 11 August 2026. The vote was 140 in favour to 6 against, with 146 ballots cast in total The Guardian. Baka succeeds Tamás Sulyok, who signed a constitutional amendment in July that ended his own term, and was formally nominated by the ruling Tisza party earlier in August Reuters.
All 51 Fidesz MPs walked out of the chamber before the vote, protesting the ousting of Sulyok from the presidency the previous month BBC. Sulyok's removal was part of a constitutional restructuring driven by Prime Minister Péter Magyar's government, which took office in early May after Viktor Orbán conceded defeat on 12 April 2026 following a landslide victory by the upstart Tisza party Reuters.
Since taking office, the Magyar government has passed 27 laws and two constitutional amendments. Amendment 16 limited the prime minister to two terms in office and MPs to three terms. Amendment 17 restored the Constitutional Court's ability to oversee acts of parliament — meaning the court can once again review and strike down legislation it finds unconstitutional. The government also cancelled the states of emergency that Orbán had used to govern by decree (laws passed without parliamentary approval), covering migration, Covid, and the war in Ukraine. The Sovereignty Protection Office, a body created under Orbán, was abolished, and a National Asset Recovery and Protection Office was established to investigate and prosecute those accused of stealing state funds under the former government BBC.
Baka's selection carries particular weight given his history with Fidesz. The party removed him from his post as president of the Supreme Court in 2011, when he attempted to stop the government from undermining the rule of law BBC. He subsequently served 17 years as Hungary's judge at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg BBC. His elevation to the presidency places a jurist with a documented record of resisting Fidesz-era judicial reforms in a position that, while largely ceremonial in ordinary circumstances, carries constitutional authority during a period of structural reordering.
Under the constitutional framework now in place, Baka's presidency will likely last only until a new constitution comes into force, or for a maximum of five years BBC. This interim character fits the broader pace of constitutional change under Magyar: the government has moved quickly to dismantle key pillars of Orbán's governance structure, from decree-based emergency powers to the Sovereignty Protection Office, while simultaneously re-empowering institutions that had been weakened during Fidesz's 16-year dominance of Hungarian politics.
Baka has also staked out positions that place him in tension with elements of the new constitutional order. He opposes the limitation of MPs' terms, viewing it as an intrusion on the right of voters to freely choose their representatives BBC. This places him at odds with Amendment 16, one of the two constitutional amendments the Magyar government has already enacted. Whether this divergence becomes a point of friction between the presidency and the governing majority, or remains a matter of personal conviction with limited operational consequence, depends on how aggressively the new government pursues further constitutional revision and how Baka interprets the boundaries of his role.
The broader context here is a comprehensive institutional reordering executed at remarkable speed. In roughly three months, the Magyar government has overturned the emergency legal framework that defined Orbán's latter years, restructured oversight mechanisms, imposed term limits on the executive and legislature, and installed as head of state a figure whom Fidesz itself removed from the judiciary over a decade ago. The Fidesz boycott of the presidential vote signals that the opposition regards the removal of Sulyok and the broader constitutional amendments as illegitimate, even as those amendments were passed through the legislative majority that Tisza secured in the April election.
For watchers of Hungarian institutional design, the sequence matters. The restoration of Constitutional Court oversight over parliamentary acts, the abolition of the Sovereignty Protection Office, and the cancellation of emergency decrees each reverse specific mechanisms that Orbán used to consolidate executive authority. The creation of a National Asset Recovery and Protection Office introduces a new enforcement instrument aimed squarely at the prior government's tenure. And Baka's presidency, interim by design, places a seasoned Strasbourg jurist in the ceremonial role during the most intensive period of constitutional reconfiguration Hungary has seen since Fidesz's own restructuring of the judiciary and basic law in 2011–2012.
