Hungary's decision to remove President Tamás Sulyok at the urging of Prime Minister Péter Magyar belongs in the category where a state removes a bad memory, a dirty habit ...an ugly era. The office itself has never been the centre of Hungarian political gravity. The presidency has long been ceremonial. Yet symbols are often more dangerous than institutions, because they remind a country who still owns yesterday.
Magyar has made little effort to disguise his intentions. He regards Sulyok as Viktor Orbán's loyal extension, a presidential seal attached to a political machine that spent well over a decade concentrating power while steadily hollowing out the independence of Hungary's democratic institutions. Whether every accusation is entirely fair almost becomes secondary. In politics, legitimacy is inseparable from perception, and Sulyok entered office carrying the unmistakable scent of Orbán's patronage.
Every revolution, however democratic, eventually reaches an awkward crossroads. Winning an election is comparatively simple. Removing the architecture of the previous regime is infinitely harder. Cabinets can be replaced overnight. Laws can be amended. But networks of influence linger in ministries, courts, public broadcasters, universities and presidential palaces long after the victory speeches have faded. They become the invisible bureaucracy of yesterday.
That is why this parliamentary vote carries significance beyond constitutional procedure. Magyar is attempting something every post-dominant leader eventually confronts: separating the state from the political personality who came to define it.
Orbán governed for so long that many Hungarians, supporters and critics alike, gradually accepted the blurring of those lines. The government became the nation. Loyalty became patriotism. Dissent increasingly resembled betrayal. Institutions that should have existed independently began reflecting the preferences of one political movement. This was never merely about elections. It was about permanence.
The irony is unmistakable. Orbán himself once portrayed his rise as the liberation of Hungary from old elites who had monopolised power. Years later, his own political legacy is being dismantled by another leader making almost identical arguments about entrenched influence. History delights in these symmetrical reversals.
Critics will inevitably accuse Magyar of political revenge disguised as democratic renewal. That accusation deserves consideration. Democracies become fragile when every incoming government purges every institution associated with its predecessor. Stability matters. Constitutional offices should not become disposable whenever parliamentary arithmetic changes.
Yet there is another danger that deserves equal attention. Allowing deeply politicised appointments to remain untouched in the name of stability can quietly legitimise the very concentration of power voters believed they had rejected. Continuity is not always neutrality. Sometimes continuity simply prolongs the influence of those who have already lost public confidence.
Europe has watched Hungary for years with a peculiar mixture of frustration and resignation, wondering whether Orbánism represented a temporary political phenomenon or a durable governing philosophy capable of surviving its founder. That question remains unanswered. Personalities leave office far more easily than political cultures.
If Magyar truly intends to restore institutional independence rather than merely repaint the machinery in different colours, his greatest test begins after this vote, not before it. Replacing one perceived loyalist with another would simply rotate the actors while preserving the script. Hungary does not need a presidential puppet with a different master. It needs institutions capable of disappointing every government equally.
That is the uncomfortable standard of genuine democracy. Not victory. Not revenge. Not even justice. Independence. And that is always far more difficult to legislate than the removal of a single president.
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