The request for review was filed by the Hungarian Two-Tailed Dog Party, who argued that the question gave "the false impression that sex reassignment surgery for minors is available today," even though it is not.Continue reading
The Orbán government has lodged a complaint with the Constitutional Court against the order of the Kúria refusing to certify a referendum question from the cabinet, Népszava reports.
At the end of July, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán announced that the government would initiate a referendum on child protection. The initiative included five questions. The Child Protection Referendum has been criticized since then. As we have also reported, the Hungarian Two-Tailed Dog Party (MKKP) also criticized the questions and challenged one of them, which reads: “Do you support that gender reassignment surgery should be available to minors?” The Supreme Court has annulled the decision of the National Electoral Committee to certify the question after examining the request for review filed by the [satirical] Hungarian Two-Tailed Dog Party.
In the reasoning for the decision, the panel referred to, among other things, the fact that if in a valid and successful referendum the “yes” answer to the question proposed for referendum is in the majority, parliament will be obliged to legislate making “gender reassignment treatments” generally “available” to all children, boys and girls, without any restrictions, which would completely erase the protection of the identity of one’s gender at birth, contrary to the provisions of the Fundamental Law, Népszava writes.
Now the government has lodged a complaint against the decision of the Kúria, arguing that this decision violates the right to a fair trial inscribed in the Fundamental Law, as “the Kúria has deviated from the wording of the question proposed for the referendum and arbitrarily extended its content by interpreting the law contra legem (against the law).”
The Kúria has so far decided to certify only one question (rejecting it), while the fate of the other four is still open.
Featured image: Prime Minister Viktor Orbán delivers a speech at the XIIth Congress of the Association of Christian Intellectuals (KÉSZ) at the Parliament on 14 September 2019. Photo by Szilárd Koszticsák/MTI
