‘The crying game’
July 6th, 2011“I am not sure whether everyone has fully grasped yet how serious this is”, comments political scientist Gábor Török on the latest spy scandal. By the time that file is closed, Hungarian democracy will have lost a player. The closet is already full of skeletons – accusations, defamations, and presumptions – but this one starts to look much more serious.”
On Monday former Socialist cabinet minister György Szilvásy was released after spending the weekend behind bars. He is suspected of espionage, along with two former heads of Hungary’s counter-espionage service.
According to Török , an independent Hungarian court will in due course declare that someone has no place in the democratic community. “If Szilvásy and the others really committed what we have only very limited knowledge of, but what the prosecutors believe is plausible, than this will prove a bigger blow to the Hungarian Socialist Party than any number of speeches at Öszöd”(a reference to the then PM Ferenc Gyurcsány’s famous admission that he had been consistently lying for 18 months in order to win the 2006 elections).
“If the prosecution case falls apart, on the other hand, Chief Public Prosecutor Péter Polt will lose his job – or at least his reputation – and I am not convinced that the governing majority can escape political responsibility”, writes Gábor Török.
The political analyst notes that someone has used illegitimate means or methods, and the day when we find out who that was will be a black one for Hungarian democracy.