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Far-Right Mi Hazánk First to Submit Bills to New Parliament

Hungary Today 2022.05.03.

The opening session of the new parliament hasn’t even ended, and the first two bills for the next four-year legislative period were already presented. These are also the first proposals of the new party that made it into the parliament, far-right Mi Hazánk Mozgalom (Our Homeland Movement). Vice-president Előd Novák has proposed scrapping the MPs’ immunity, in addition to end the state-of-emergency originally imposed in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

This article was originally published on our sister-site, Ungarn Heute. 

Ending coronavirus measures, rejection of compulsory vaccinations, and further Covid-19 lockdowns significantly dominated Mi Hazánk’s campaign before the election, so a move to abolish the “nearly perpetual state of emergency” was something that could be expected.

Scrapping the “outdated privilege of politicians” was also an important element of the party program, and Előd Novák didn’t hesitated to propose it on the very first day of the new parliament. The justification was that MPs’ immunity , i.e. their protection from prosecution, was untenable, especially because the public had witnessed abuse of this immunity in many cases.

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For this very reason, Novák said, MPs should waive this right in order to restore public confidence in their office, and “the possibility of abuse of immunity should also be limited.”

Novák said the government’s intention to maintain the special legal order in view of the “American-Russian war in Ukraine” was “unacceptable”. He said Mi Hazánk lawmakers would not support amending the Constitution to enable such a step, and the government should withdraw the decree allowing foreign military units into the country, he added.

featured image via János Vajda/MTI


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