Hungary’s parliament voted in Andras Baka, formerly the head of the Supreme Court, as the country’s next president on 11 August.
The symbolic step is part of new Prime Minister Peter Magyar’s sweeping efforts to dismantle the legacy of former premier Viktor Orban after winning April’s general elections.
Baka was a staunch critic of Orban who was removed from his Supreme Court role during the former PM’s tenure.
Now, he will replace Tamas Sulyok, a president appointed by Orban, whose term in office was shortened via constitutional amendment in order to remove him from the largely ceremonial role.
The vote in parliament to appoint Baka was always likely to be a formality, given the massive majority that Magyar’s conservative, pro-European TISZA party holds in the chamber.
It went almost entirely along party lines, 140 lawmakers voted in favor and 6 voted against. TISZA holds 141 seats.
Orban’s right-wing populist Fidesz party, which has 52 lawmakers, boycotted the vote in protest— but did so knowing it, would be powerless to prevent Baka’s appointment.
Baka, 73, is a jurist and politician who was briefly a member of parliament from 1990 to 1991.
He spent almost 20 years as a judge at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), before returning to Hungary in 2009 to become president of its Supreme Court.
In December 2011, not long after Orban returned to power as prime minister after a stint in opposition, he was removed from his role three years before his term was set to expire and sidelined from public life in Hungary.
Magyar said Baka’s life served “as an example of commitment to the democratic rule of law and constitutional principles” as the central European country needs to be “guided back onto the path of the rule of law and constitutional governance.”
