Interview with József Kajdi – Episode 2

‘87 is interesting in that, and I definitely want to mention this, and I mentioned it for a reason.  I think this is a golden period for the Justice Department and for codification itself, that the legislative act is born. Now, this probably doesn’t mean anything to anybody at first, but there’s one very important thing about this new legislative law, and that is that it removes the legal authority of the Presidium, which replaced the parliament’s role.  I might have to say a few words about that, because, technically, in order to free the National Assembly from its responsibilities and burdens, at the start of the socialist era, a 21-member Presidium was established, and this Presidium could make decrees, and had the power to make laws, so in essence it was the replacement of the National Assembly.

As a result of this, in the 1960s in particular, the Parliament practically held a spring session and an autumn session, for a day or two, so nothing more, there was no continuous parliamentary work taking place, but instead the Presidium decided on these matters by statutory decrees. For example, in 1963, the only law passed in Hungary was the Budget Law for the coming year.

So, I repeat, instead of parliamentary bills, statutory decrees were made. Now this is abolished by the Legislative Act. So now the power to make laws has been returned to Parliament.

It is a different matter that the Parliament of that time had a rather peculiar composition.  Perhaps older people remember that there was a quota system, there were all kinds of people sitting there, even ladies in headscarves, because there had to be a quota for women and seats had to be filled on the basis of a certain quota of origin. But in 1985 there was a significant change, and this also indicates that there was a gap in the system, because not only MSZMP candidates were allowed to run in parliamentary elections, because in 1985, independent candidates who had adopted the programme of the Patriotic Front were also allowed to run.

And surprisingly, two people, Zoltán Király, a journalist from Szeged, and Lajos Czoma, director of the Keszthely Castle Museum, were elected to Parliament as independent MPs.  And later, because such an institution still existed at that time, if constituents  tried to submit a motion of no confidence against a member of parliament,  then by-elections had to be held, and so they managed to get some mamelukes out, and these people into parliament. Jóska Debreczeni, for example, from the MDF, and Gábor Roszik, also from the MDF, and MP-s from the SZDSZ also made it into Parliament.

So, if I remember correctly, four people were elected this way, the two I mentioned above, with the addition of Miklós Tamás Gáspár, and Edit Rózsa.  So four of them were elected to the parliament of the time in a by-election.  They regularly contacted the codifiers of the Ministry of Justice, and their relationship with them was the liveliest.

I would like to emphasize that this did not imply any opposition-mindedness on our part, and especially not on my part.  I am a civil servant and I do my job.  However, I would like to mention the name of someone, the deputy minister who supervised us, who supervised the public law department, who is called Ferenc Petrik.

Ferenc Petrik, unjustly gets much less credit than it is due, while he is the one responsible for the concept and the birth of this particular legislative law, and for the first major laws regulating freedom, such as the Association Act, the Assembly Act, the Right to Strike Act, which he drafted with us, for example the Assembly Act, which I made, , or the draft of it, at least.  It is another matter that the Minister of Justice at the time, Markója, whose various scandals, just to mention one of them, like when he made an inappropriate gesture to the wife of the then American ambassador at a foreign reception, and that was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and perhaps it is excusable to say this, that he was not to be consulted or contacted in the morning,  when he would usually have a bottle of Ararat cognac, he would go to bed at lunch, and he’d wake up around 4 or 5 p.m., and then he would order our superiors, heads of department or other leaders, to ministerial briefings.  I’ve never had one with him, so I only heard this from my managers that they were always complaining that they had to stay after hours.

By 1987, I’ve been at the ministry for more than a year, and so far I’m given quite nice tasks, when my head of department called me in, and it’s a bit like what happened at the Miklós Zrínyi Military Academy, because he told me that he’s going to go to the party headquarters and will probably come back in a year or a year and a half as deputy minister.  It should be noted that at that time certain ministries, the most important ministries, including the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of the Interior, and the Ministry of Finance, were under direct party control.  So, in practice, when we made a proposal, we did not make it for the government, but for the MSZMP Central Committee, as it was written on the cover pages of all the proposed draft laws made at the time.

If it came back with a positive signal, we just took off the cover and then it said that it was a submission to the government.  And it went in with the same text.  It is obvious that the government, after the central committee had made a submission, did not bother with it, neither did they dare to contest or change it, so it was clearly given the green light.

That’s why, and I’m just going to make a little comment, it’s no coincidence that Károly Grósz, the then General Secretary of the MSZMP, said at a meeting of the MSZMP-KB (MSZMP Central Committee) in 1988 that lawyers had put politics on ice.  Because this is how the draft law on assembly, which was passed by the parliament at the beginning of ’88, slipped through the CC, this is how the draft law on association slips through, this is how a law was passed, which stated that there will be a constitutional court in Hungary, etc. etc.

To return to the previous case, my head of department called me in and told me that he has already discussed with the head of department and the deputy minister, who is Ferenc Petrik, that I should be his successor, but there is one condition, I can only be his successor if I become a member of the party.  And I would like to emphasize that it was not out of conscious oppositional attitude and consideration, we can safely say again that it was more out of laziness or not caring, that I said that “Look, if I didn’t become a party member as a professional soldier, then I won’t become a party member now either”, so I didn’t join the MSZMP, to my surprise I was appointed head of department anyway,  and that’s how I went through the period, as head of department when the new leadership came in, Markója was fired because of the aforementioned scandal, and Kálmán Kulcsár came in as the academic Minister of Justice, and brought in two deputy ministers, Tamás Sárközy and Géza Kilényi, Tamás Sárközy took the codification of economic law under his wing, and Géza Kilényi took the codification of public law under his wing, and they reorganized the Ministry, and I became deputy head of department under Edit Papácsy at the Public Law Department, and we continued to work like this from 88 onwards.  In essence, the draft laws I mentioned were adopted at that time, which were waiting in the drawer for the new leadership, so they just had to be taken out, and of course the new leadership took the credit for them.

But in the end, I have to say that they deserve the credit, because once again, the party HQ has passed it through, and the government has also accepted it.  In those days, it was custom for MPs to hold county group meetings, and if a draft law or bill was introduced, they had to go down and convince the MPs beforehand why it was good and why it should be passed.  And that’s how I met Péter Tölgyessy for the first time in my life, representing the Institute of Law, and we discussed the bill on the right of assembly and the right of association,  and I found him to be a very sympathetic, incredibly intelligent person, and a really tough debating partner.

I of course represented the Ministry of Law’s position, while he was in some ways opposing and criticizing the drafts.  So we arrive in 1989 at least, when Géza Kilényi arrived at the Ministry of Justice,  he came in with the mandate, issued by Kálmán Kulcsár, to draft a new constitution.  And he formed a team, he selected six people from the ministry who were thus freed of any other task, and I’m the plus one, so there’s six plus one people in this particular constitution drafting team.

I didn’t actually have to deal with the constitution, Géza Kilényi entrusted me with the draft law on the constitutional court instead.  I emphasize this because it will have a major impact on my fate later on.  And we have a regular meeting on Fridays to discuss how far we’ve got in the draft.

Multiple drafts were prepared, there were professional consultations on it, etc. etc. And I had to keep doing my original job on top of this one, that is, my job as deputy head of department, so I’m given this as an additional job.

And at that time, I must say once again, although I kept my distance as a civil servant, although this concept was not known at the time, as a ministerial official, I kept my distance from day-to-day politics.  But of course I was aware of the crowds that gathered on Freedom Square on 15 March 1989.

In Samizdat, the Beszélő, I read about the speakers of the event, about what they said,  and what Cserhalmi read from the steps of the TV headquarters of Freedom Square. How Dénes Csengey occupied the Hungarian Television “in the name of the people.”

But I repeat, as a ministry worker, I felt that I had to be neutral in terms of politics and party preference. And I am also aware of the big demonstration against the Romanian systemization program. I did not participate in these protests.

The first such active participation of mine was the re-burial of Imre Nagy on 16 June 1989, where beforehand, we received a strong warning from the party headquarters of all ministries, that while they can’t forbid us attending, it’s a work day, so we should work instead.

We were not forbidden to attend this re-burial in Heroes’ Square, but we are strongly advised not to attend.  That is why, as I recall, only three of us from the ministry went to this particular event.  I will be honest and say that I announced this in advance to my then head of department, Edit Papácsy, who said that “I’ll leave it to you, you can do what you want”, and so we went.

So I watched and listened to it on the spot.  I was a bit surprised that afterwards it was such a big deal, that Viktor Orbán announced in public that Soviet troops should be withdrawn, etc. I had read from the Beszélő that this was already said in front of a crowd of hundreds of thousands of people on the 15th of March 1989.  The other thing is that it was not broadcast on television and radio.  So only those who were there on Freedom Square or those who read samizdat literature, were really informed about it.

But perhaps to this day this belief and this story is still in people’s minds, that Viktor Orbán was the first to say this.  I would like to stress that it is clearly not a fact.  It was, admittedly, a courageous act,  although I know this today from my present position and from my later position, having read certain government proposals and reports of government meetings later,  I was able to see that this decision had already been made, and the agreement had been taken.  So Viktor Orbán is announcing a fait accompli.  However, the public at the time was hardly aware of this.

But let’s stick to ‘89, because it’s very important.  Because I also learned that a lawyer, Imre Kónya, whom I later got to know very well and very closely,  was setting up the Independent Lawyers’ Forum with his friends.  This is sometime in the spring of 89, if I remember correctly.

And the Opposition Roundtable was created at their initiative. But it should also be noted that thanks to the Law of Association,  and this is where we come back to the remark of Grósz,  who said that lawyers had put politics on ice,  opposition organizations began to emerge and form using the Law of Association.  For example, the Hungarian Democratic Forum was formed in Lakitelk in ’87, initially as a movement, and much later it was officially transformed into a party, essentially thanks to József Antall.

The Network of Free Initiatives was founded in 88, which later became the SZDSZ.  And in 89 Fidesz was founded, and I would like to talk about this because we received an order from a party headquarters to show that a crime had been committed by them, and that criminal proceedings should be initiated against the founders of Fidesz.  Because it must be proved that there is a one-party system in Hungary, and any such organization that wishes to operate as a party, as a political party, is committing a criminal offence of violating the constitution.

This was clearly directed against Fidesz.  I remember how our head of department at the time was sweating profusely, because of course we couldn’t prove, and to be honest, we didn’t really want to prove that this was really a crime. Part of the reason I didn’t want to, and there’s still no political position on my part, is that my friends and I regularly went to Bibó College to play football during this period.

The director of this Bibó College at that time was István Stumpf, who I mentioned before, that he was a fellow soldier and a former university classmate, and he allowed us to go there regularly to play football on Saturday mornings, and sometimes Orbán Viktor, Kövér Laci and others would come down if there weren’t so many people there or if they were at home, in the college. So sometimes we would play football with them, and there’s a difference of four or five years between us, so we knew each other at least on this kind of first name basis.  And that’s why it was a bit strange for us, together with my friends, with whom I say we used to play football regularly, that we should have to prove that these guys were committing a crime.

The point is that the official resolution obviously did not please the Central Committee,  since it showed that there was nothing to be done in criminal law, so no criminal proceedings could be initiated. Anyway, shortly afterwards the SZDSZ was also transformed into a party, the Hungarian Democratic Forum as well, and so on and so forth.

The Independent Smallholders’ party did not have to become a party, since József Antall proved to them that they have not been abolished,  so they can continue their activities as a party in a legal continuity. But then, like green grass after a fresh rain, many parties were formed, some historical parties started spreading their wings again, and many newly founded parties were being formed.

And it was at the initiative of the Opposition Round Table that a compromise agreement was reached, that national round table talks should be held, and that agreement was reached on 13 June 1989, but I think that in order for understanding how the Hungarian political situation has reached this point,  a little foreign policy perspective is needed,  which I can honestly say I only learned about much later.

Because it is obvious, and this was not denied later by József Antall,  and he even emphasized it explicitly, and it will turn out why I can also say this,  that the international situation at the time was a defining factor,  like it’s said in the famous Hungarian movie, A Tanú (The Witness), that “the international situation is escalating”, in 1985, a new general secretary was elected, Gorbachev, who announced Perestroika in ’86,  which started an economic-political change in the Soviet Union. He met with Bush Sr., the President of the United States, in Reykjavík, where an agreement was made that neither country will interfere in the internal affairs of the other country, and this time they’re not referring to each other, but a third, foreign country. So whatever happens, the events of 1956 will not be repeated.

About this agreement, by the way, József Antal told me later that they actually found out about it at the beginning of ’88.  So interestingly enough, for the democratic opposition of the time,  even if it’s not a secret, this information was not actually confirmed,  and if you think about it, it’s from ’88 onwards that these particular opposition movements  started to gain strength,  probably partly due to the fact that they knew that  regardless of the fact that the Soviet troops have been here  for quite a long time, and that there is still a one-party system,  and that there are 850,000 party-state members in Hungarian society,  you can sense that certain changes are happening.  But for me it the real indication that this system is beginning to fragment, was what I mentioned, that I was not forced to be a party member even as a professional soldier,  and that I could be a head of department in the Ministry of Justice without being a party member either,  whereas ten years ago, or even a couple years ago, this would have been unthinkable.

Coming back to the national round table negotiations,  for me this was a fateful event,  because suddenly on a Friday, when this constitution preparation team met as usual,  Géza Kilényi came with the news that  the MSZMP has agreed with the opposition round table,  that such a negotiation will be held,  and that the bills submitted  to the parliament by the MSZMP,  including the draft of the new constitution, because it was already prepared and presented,  the draft law on the constitutional court and other bills,  which will form the basis of the national round table, will be withdrawn.  He declared who would be in which subcommittee, because the technical work was done by the Roundtable in different subcommittees,  who would represent the Ministry of Justice,  which also meant representing the MSZMP,  because, the roundtable ended up three-sided, one side was the MSZMP, the party-state, the second was the different parties of the opposition round table,  and there was a mixed salad, a third side, which included a representative of the Patriotic People’s Front and a representative of each women’s organization,  to the most extreme, far-left Ferenc Munich society onwards. And when he got to me, Géza said, “Jóska, you and your other colleague will work in subcommittee 1/1.”

I asked him the naive question, “I’m sorry, – we were on a first-name basis – , what am I really doing at the national round table when the MSZMP is negotiating, yet I am not a member of the party, in fact, I’m not a member of any party at all.” And he told me that this was not a question, it was a job, I had drafted the Constitutional Court Act,  for him it was very important,  and it turned out later that for him the most important issue in the whole series of negotiations was the Constitutional Court,  because he wanted to be a constitutional judge, and later this wish came true.  And that is why I had to participate in that subcommittee, as a non-party member.

There was another member of our team who was not from my party, Péter Szalay, later a constitutional judge, who’s at the end of his mandate right now, and who was also a member of our negotiating delegation, originally from the secretariat of Pozsgay, as a non-party member.  By the way, out of the five, there was only one young lawyer who represented the party center, the personal secretary of Fejti, he was called István György, who was a very intelligent, very well-prepared, young lawyer, a few years older than me.  And this also proves that the MSZMP in the second half of the 1980s realized that after directly controlling the individual ministries, not only in terms of political control but also in terms of professional control, it brought very talented, professionally prepared young people into the party headquarters for, let’s say, a year and a half, who could then be returned to high positions, for example as deputy ministers in the ministries.

That’s essentially how this guy got in, and that’s how he became the personal secretary to Fejti. The point is, we had our very first meeting of the 1/1 Base Committee on 16th of June,  and of course we were trying to find out beforehand who we were going to be negotiating with,  who was going to be opposite us at the opposition round table, and we knew the names, some of them were familiar to me, like Viktor Orbán, with whom we managed to play football together,  but we never had a professional discussion,  Péter Tölgyessy, with whom I have had a professional discussion, Imre Kónya, whom I saw on the TV, but never met him personally before,  and there were two names that were complete strangers to me, József Antall and Imre Boross, this is not the same as the later smallholder minister, he was then the attorney general of the smallholders’, he was an old lawyer from the country,  he burred very heavily, and he was also very old-fashioned, bow tie, etc. So he was a very elegant gentleman.

It was a very hot summer, the trial delegation showed up, and only two people were wearing jackets, one was Joseph Antall and the other was this particular lawyer, very elegant, and Antall started the trial by saying that he felt insulted, on our behalf, that the MSZMP essentially assigned ministry employees as a working task to such a series of political negotiations, and I have to be honest that in a way it felt good, it partly relieved me of the fact that “yes, I am assigned to this task, but I can still represent my own professional opinion,  and however much there is a certain guidance from the party center,  as to what we should represent, I will represent what I think.” It wasn’t just me, by the way, it was the whole team, including the personal secretary, who stood up after the negotiations,  poor thing, and said,  “Kids, well, after all this, – I’m not going to quote him verbatim, –  I’m just saying that I’m going to be knocked on my behind, because of what we agreed to with the opposition round table.”

Really, we didn’t agree on anything special. We agreed on things like the fact that we’ve abandoned the idea that the leading force of society was the working class,  so these Marxist slogans that were in the previous constitution were omitted.

And the point is that this Subcommittee was the one that negotiated the most throughout these 3 months, on weekends too. We were usually exempt from standard work, and we often discussed details for up to 5-8 hours. After each day of negotiation, my other MoJ colleague would essentially codify the text that we had agreed on, and it was always discussed and agreed on at the beginning of the next meeting.

We either corrected it together, or we adopted it, and then we moved on. There was an interesting technical aspect to the whole negotiation, because relatively at the beginning, Péter Tölgyessy, who was supported by József Antall, said that we should take the subject of the Constitutional Court out of the subjects to be discussed. Needless to say, this was a serious blow for me, but not just for me, but for Géza Kilényi especially.

And the reason was that the constitutional court is essentially a top-level legal protection body for the constitution and the legal system, which is totally unjustified in a socialist legal system, which we want to replace. So a constitutional court should not defend the socialist legal system, but if we succeed in transforming the legal system,  if we succeed in creating a new constitutional network here in the round table talks, then the constitutional court should defend that, not the current one. And indeed, this was not an issue until literally the last minute.

A very serious issue was the institution of the President of the Republic, which was first run as a separate draft and then finally included in the constitution itself. It was a very serious issue how the president of the republic should be elected by the people or by the parliament,  how far his powers should be predominant, that is, how far Hungary should be a presidential republic,  it was decided very quickly that the new form of government would be a republic replacing the People’s Republic.

On the 18th of September ‘89, the agreement was reached.  It was a Monday, and on Friday the 15th, when we had our last negotiation in the Subcommittee,  to my great surprise the opposition roundtable negotiating delegation came along,  saying that if we’re willing to negotiate the draft of the Constitutional Court letter by letter over the weekend,  and we can agree, that can be included in the agreement.

Well, of course, there was no choice, and I was very pleased, because that was the reason I was in this negotiating delegation in the first place.  We took it on, we sat in the Ministry of Justice on Saturday, Sunday, and we negotiated.  On the EKA (Ellenzéki Kerekasztal) side, László Sólyom and Péter Tölgyessy participated,  on our side, my MoJ colleague István Somogyvári and I,  and on the third side there was someone who didn’t even speak, but was basically in an observer status.

We managed to reach an agreement, so much so that we even agreed on the method of selection of the first judges of the constitution.  And it was decided, or a compromise agreement was reached, that the 11-member Constitutional Court would not be filled, but that only five people would be elected,  two by the MSZMP, two by the opposition round table, and one neutral person agreed upon.  And this was done the way that, the MSZMP gave 10 names, the opposition round table also gave 10 names,  and they could pull off 8-8 names from the other’s list,  and what remained was considered as essentially acceptable,  and was to be passed in the parliamentary elections.

It was essentially because of this agreement that I was able to get into Parliament itself,  and to participate in the signing of the agreement.  If I recall, the agreement was signed in the hunting hall,  and I had to report to the mid-level committee,  that there was a clause on the constitutional court added to the agreement,  and I was also able to stay there and follow the events,  so I personally witnessed when the SZDSZ and Fidesz, if not vetoed,  but declared that they would not sign it after all, joined by the Smallholders’ Party, but the point is that the majority finally signed it,  and an agreement was reached, and then József Antall came to us,  I was standing in a corner with Péter Szalay, as a small man obviously, there among the big ones, and he specifically came up to us to have a toast,  I found out afterwards that he had apple juice, because he never drank alcohol, but you couldn’t see it in his glass, so he came to toast,  and he said, “Boys, thank you very much, this was a real man’s job.” Now, I’m essentially from that moment on back to being a civil servant, a standard ministry employee.

It’s another matter that these three months gave me a great deal intellectually, professionally and humanly, because in József Antall I got to know a very well-prepared, diplomatic, cordial man  a real teacher, who, moreover, made such a nice gesture towards us, Peter Szalai and us,  because Viktor Orbán did not often speak to us professionally,  or perhaps never spoke at all  according to my memory, but he regularly called us “commies”. So when there was a debate, he would end by saying, “of course you’d say that, you are communists after all,” etc. etc.

And József Antall always spoke on our behalf, and said, “Viktor, don’t be silly, you know it best, that two of the five people in that group are assigned here as a job,  as non-party members.”

So it was very good for me on a human level, but I would like to emphasize again that József Antall was a very special person,  and professionally he was far superior to us,  and I only found out later that he was not a lawyer,  and we were practically all lawyers sitting there,  and yet it was a non-lawyer who was the professional leader.  And it was also clear  that he’s the number one man of the opposition roundtable negotiating team, so he’s the leader,  and the others were always listening to him very carefully. By the way, Tölgyessy was perhaps the other one, but clearly József Antall was the leader of this series of negotiations,  and he essentially achieved that the starting point would be the 1848 No. 3 law and the 1946 No. 1 law, starting with the republican form of government, he, as a historian, derived a lot of things from this, and from this we started the derivation and regulation of constitutional law,  which was finally adopted by the parliament in the October of 1989.

In this connection, allow me to make a positive comment, that I have to give all the credit to the parliament,  who obviously accepted,  despite all their political and human convictions, that what was adopted in the national round table, they would adopt it as law.  There were some particular amendments, not major ones, but more like this-or-that ones, for example, that’s when the constitution was amended to make Esztergom the seat of the constitutional court.

So it was originally going to be Budapest, but then a provincial deputy stood up and said that everything was here in Budapest, that Hungary was too head-centered,  and that at least the seat of the Constitutional Court should be in a big city in the countryside, in Esztergom. This, for example, would then be included in the text as an amendment.  In connection with the constitution, I would like to tell you another interesting story, and I would always like to continue in this way, so that I can add my own experiences.

Because the Parliament adopted the constitutional text created by the National Round Table and the 1/1 Base Committee,  which is not a new constitution in form, because the numbering and the title of the law remains the same as in 1948,  but in practice, in content, a completely new constitution is created. It’s been said many times, and probably many of you have heard this,  that essentially one provision of the content remains unchanged, that the capital of Hungary is Budapest.

But this is a big modification to the constitution after all. And when it was voted by the Parliament, there came, through the head of the department, Edit Papácsy, saying that she had just been given a task by Kálmán Kulcsár. Now it was a Friday afternoon, and we were all getting ready to go home.

But Edit Papácsy said that there is no going home, the task was to produce the text of the new constitution or the constitutional amendment at the weekend, and to add the explanatory memorandum, then the memorandum and the amendment was to be published in the Hungarian Gazette together.  This had to be printed as soon as possible so that Mátyás Szűrös (interim president) could proclaim the republic on the terrace of the Parliament waving the Gazette, on October the 23rd. Now, due to a lack of telephones, we obviously could not call home.

I was a young married man with two small children, and I couldn’t call home either.  And we started to work, some of us had to prepare the explanatory statement, some of us had to prepare the standard text, and then we had to drive to Lajosmizse, where the printing press was waiting for us, and even the printing technology was not that good, and there was no internet, so it was not possible to send the text over that way.  So the Hungarian gazette had to be typed, transported, and printed, so it was born in a very complicated process.

We finished at dawn on Saturday, at about 5:00 to 5:30. Needless to say, we could only stay awake because Edith Papácsi ordered us cognac, ordered us sandwiches, we had coffee, we were smoking heavily, and I think almost everyone was smoking back then. And I probably got home at half past six in the morning, so I was in a properly dim state, sleepless, smelling of cognac and cigarettes.

When my wife heard the door lock rattle, she rushed out of the room, and demanded to know where I’d been.  Well, at such times one says the most honest answer, I said “we made a constitution.”  And then she said, “Well, you’ll have to think up a better story,” and didn’t speak to me for two days, so the family peace was immediately shattered,  and forgiveness was only really granted when on Monday, she saw on television that the republic was indeed, being proclaimed in front of 100,000 people in Kossuth Square.

By the way, it was a truly uplifting feeling to go out into the crowd and see that the Gazette that we had created and made under such circumstances the weekend before  was flying in the hands of Mátyás Szűrös, and that the Republic was proclaimed.  That’s just one of the aspects of this story,  but to return to it, I’m basically watching events again, like a snail, neutral, with retracted tentacles.  The other thing is that, as I said, I was very impressed, and I was very impressed by Joseph Antall, and I started to follow him.

I wasn’t interested in his party as much as his own persona and through him, of course, the politics represented by the MDF at that time.  And I was very happy when József Antall was elected the first president of the Hungarian Democratic Forum in October 1989 with a 97% majority.  It should be noted that the Democratic Forum had already had a president of the executive, Zoltán Bíró, but he was not elected by the party’s Delegates’ Assembly or National Assembly, so it was not the party members, but the Executive Committee itself that elected an acting president for a transitional period.

So it is safe to say that the first chairman of the MDF is József Antall. And from that moment on, József Antall has been leading the third-way movement that was the Hungarian Democratic Forum. I should say that the MDF was originally a background movement for Pozsgay, who was very close to Zoltán Bíró, who was a colleague and the head of Pozsgay’s department when he was minister.

They were very close friends. Zoltán Bíró and some of the MDF leadership wanted to use the MDF as a base for Pozsgay, and to shift his image a little bit towards that of a reform communist and a third-position politician. And they were very much against the Hungarian Democratic Forum literally becoming a formal political party.

This is clearly due to József Antall, who decided that the Hungarian Democratic Forum should be led towards a center-right tendency, and towards becoming a political party, because only a proper party can compete in the next elections, and have a chance of winning.  But let me go back to the National Round Table for one more sentence, because so far I’ve only talked about the constitution, the president of the republic and the constitutional court,  but there are some other important and significant bills that have been passed and that socialist parliament has also passed.

A separate law on the functioning and management of political parties was passed.

Essentially, this allowed for free elections to be held in the spring of 1990.  Essentially, the state audit office was created, and drafts and laws were passed which prepared the ground for a constitutional state based on public law. However, the laws that would facilitate the change of the economic aspect of the system were not yet in place, so by the time the elections took place and the Antall government emerged victorious in the elections, regime changing, and its public law aspect had been largely completed, but the economic regime changing was unfinished.

I have just mentioned two terms that I would like to comment on.  Many people say regime change.  I don’t like to use this term, frankly, partly because Joseph Antall was also very much against this term.

He always said, even in public, the only thing a man changes is their underwear in the morning.  Regime change, that doesn’t cover the term. But if you have to be technical about it, and you can be, it’s because change is a simple act.

And if we think about it, we are talking about a process that has been going on for several years,  because we mentioned and talked about the fact that there were already in ’88, or even earlier, certain fragments in the one-party system of the time, and essentially over the years it develops in such a way that then thanks to the National Roundtable Negotiations, and thanks to the laws passed by the parliament it was possible to have had free elections in the spring of ‘90,  and essentially that is a significant date for free elections in the context of regime change.  And I would actually from here use another term, and I do use another term, the term regime changing, which I think is a conscious act, so when you are the holder of power, because you have a new regime as a result of elections, that power is consciously trying to bring change,  and what I mentioned before, there is a lagging part of regime changing, economic regime changing, that is clearly left to the Antall government.

There is only one subgroup, subcommittee that is not getting anywhere, and it’s important to mention this, in the National Roundtable, and it’s the one dealing with the media, which unfortunately has consequences later on.  Miklós Haraszti, who represents the opposition roundtable in this subcommittee, in a published statement a few years later,  and Attila Léber, who was also a colleague of mine in the university group, wrote a study on this, that they deliberately sabotaged the success of this subcommittee. They did not want any change in the established state of the media.

They perceived very well that there were people in both radio and television and in the press who were close to them in terms of values and political ideology,  so it was a situation that was favorable to them.  And if any change is made, and perhaps an effort is made to have a more neutral media situation, it is obviously worse for them than the current situation.  So that is why they, again, have deliberately prevented that subcommittee from coming to a conclusion.

That’s one thing, and the other thing, and here I have to exercise a little self-criticism in the name of the 1/1 Base Subcommittee, because we successfully created a rule in the draft constitution that established cardinal laws that require two-thirds approval, so 2/3-s approval of all MP-s are needed in such cases, and all societal relations concerning human rights had to be regulated by cardinal laws according to the revised constitution. That is why, in practice, a budget law was also a two-thirds law.  So I must say that very few legislative items in the new parliament could be passed by a single majority.

So we have managed to create a catch-22 trap in public law which has made the country practically ungovernable for the executive.  That is why, when the Hungarian Democratic Forum won the election, the second round of which was on József Antall’s 59th birthday by the way, on April the 8th.

Then the Hungarian Democratic Forum wins, essentially, but not by a majority sufficient to form a government on its own, so a coalition government clearly had to be formed, and József Antall immediately stated in his maiden speech that the Christian Democratic People’s Party and the Independent Smallholders’ Party are natural political allies.  Obviously, he had already made calculations whether a parliamentary majority would be achieved, since an executive power needs a majority, not even a two-thirds majority, but a secure parliamentary backing.

By the way, many people were already asking the question at the time, and later on, how much better it would have been if a grand coalition had been formed.  If an MDF-SZDSZ grand coalition could have been formed, because then it would have been possible to tackle the two-thirds laws immediately, anything could have been changed, and a new constitution could have been created.  In fact, we did indeed stand up at the round table discussion and said that the new parliament would have to remain responsible for drafting the new constitution.

But József Antall rejected it on two grounds.  Irrespective of the fact that, for example, very serious international politicians of high standing, as well as economic and financial experts, were also calling for it.  His first argument was that if a government holds power, and it’s confident and comfortable in its seat it’s very easy to become corrupted.  By which he meant that once you don’t have the checks and balances in terms of how it works, it’s easy to do things, to abuse that power, the power provided by a 2/3-s majority, and he did think it’s very important, especially as the cradle of democracy was being formed, as we started to relearn and build democracy, to have a powerful opposition.  An opposition that keeps the executive under constant control, which forces the government to compromise on two-thirds legislation, because that’s the only way to get two-thirds legislation passed.

By the way, I note that there has never been so much six-party consultation between the political parties in parliament as there was in the first four years of the Antal and Boros government.  So he took this very seriously and he made, essentially, a condition of his own government.  But his other argument was that, knowing the radical political conception and attitude of the Free Democrat politicians, he could not guarantee the physical integrity of government officials after a government meeting if he allowed these two groups to go head to head.

This was because after the first meeting in Lakitelk, some of the later SZDSZ politicians who were there had spread rumors abroad that an anti-Semitic movement was beginning to develop here.  So, in essence, this anti-Semitic accusation was already being levelled at the Hungarian Democratic Forum.  Later on, it was also levelled at József Antall himself, while one of his grandmothers was also Jewish.

So you certainly couldn’t accuse him of this.  Moreover, I remember that when this accusation was later voiced against him, I was also outraged, and he said, “Well, look around you, – and I’m not going to give any names because it is a confidential kind of personal information –, there are numerous MP’s sitting here in my cabinet, who participate in even the most confidential meetings with us, while being Jewish.

So obviously, this anti-Semitic accusation cannot manifest itself.  So that’s briefly all about that.  So I’m working, as I said, in the Ministry of Justice. I’m very happy with the election result.

Obviously, not being a political scientist and just a lay observer of the events of the time, I attribute the MDF’s electoral victory in large part to the last personal debate, when János Kis and József Antall had a public debate on TV, József Antall’s intellectual superiority was clear, and the posters that showed that the MDF was the calm force, and I think he managed to calm down the 850,000 party members.  While in the election campaign there were posters that said, “Tovarisch, konets”.

Many people translated it as meaning “Konets for the comrades”, and “Big Konets” for all the comrades, so for all former party members.  And there were posters of the MDF saying “Spring cleaning” and so on, which must have caused serious fear among the party members of the time, which I later saw from my colleagues.  However, at the end of April, another very interesting task came up unexpectedly,  because suddenly the Deputy Minister in charge of supervising me, Tibor Bogdán,  a young lawyer colleague, who had been a colleague in the Ministry of Justice since ’86,  came calling.

He replaced Géza Kilényi, who was going to be a constitutional judge, and is one of the first five people I mentioned.  So he was leaving the ministry in the autumn of 1989, and the task was to deal with the MDF-SZDSZ agreement which was being made overnight, which is colloquially known as the MDF-SZDSZ pact, which has to be codified immediately so that by the time the new parliament meets, it can be presented as a bill to the new parliament.

The essence of this is that the number cardinal laws should be drastically reduced.  So József Antal knew on 8 April, when he was confronted with the fact that the MDF had won, he was also the MDF candidate for prime minister, that he would be given the mandate to form a government, but he knew from the National Round Table negotiations that with this legislation the country was already ungovernable, and that the government would immediately fall. So we had to drastically reduce the number of two-thirds laws somehow.

Alternatively, the other solution could be the grand coalition, but I’ve already explained his opinion on that, which I shared. So the first option was left, that somehow they should be reduced, and that’s why he initiated such an agreement with the SZDSZ,  which clearly implied some bargaining and compromise, so there had to be some sort of a deal in order for the SZDSZ to go along with it. By the way, I must add that I have a few more hints as to why this sin was committed in the summer of 1989, why this particular rubber law was included, why we wanted there to be so many cardinal laws.

Back then the opposition and the opposition round table were firmly convinced that  “All right, there will be an election in the spring of 90, but there are 850,000 members of the party here in Hungary, and they have family members, so it is clear that the MSZMP will win that election.  It won’t have a two-thirds majority, we will probably be in parliament,  but since all the laws are two-thirds, or at least a lot of laws are two-thirds,  the MSZMP will practically only be able to govern if it agrees with us.”

Yes, but it backfired in the end, so that’s why József Antal clearly saw that somehow this catch-22 trap had to be broken, and initiated negotiations with Péter Tölgyessy and János Kis.  This was also born in one night, it seems that these great works are usually born in the night,  because I remember that they were in the deputy minister’s room, and Kati Kutrucz, Imre Kónya and Pista Balsai were there, sometimes Péter Tölgyessy also appeared, then we agree on the normative text with him,  and in the meantime the agreement is also being negotiated upon,  and Kati Kutrucz, I found out afterwards, that the intellectual leader of the whole thing was Kati Kutrucz, who was also my teacher at the law school,  and then the agreement itself was finally reached,  then we could codify this particular amendment to the law,  and so it could be submitted, and when the new parliament convened on the second of May, this new constitutional amendment was already before them.