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Rise, orgy and fall from grace of Orbán's strongman in Brussels

2020-12-06T09:06:00.580Z


József Szájer, one of the politicians closest to the Hungarian Prime Minister, was in charge of softening the Budapest speech to the European institutions


József Szájer votes in the European Parliament in 2013.PATRICK SEEGER / EPA

The party was called through an

app

specialized in sexual encounters for men.

The doors of the apartment opened at five in the afternoon on the last Friday in November.

The place is located a step away from the Grand-Place, in the center of Brussels.

At the entrance there is a sign that says: "Come in if you dare."

On the other side: dark light, moving lasers dotting the walls and in the background the soundtrack of

The New Pope

series

.

Clothes and cell phones had to be left in a locker at the entrance.

Maybe have a drink in the kitchen, chat and meet other assistants.

Then go to the living room, with mattresses and sofas scattered around the room, projected porn and the face of the god Bacchus watching the scene, his mouth open and illuminated.

There were 25 people and József Szájer, the Hungarian MEP from the ultraconservative and homophobic party Fidesz and one of Viktor Orbán's strongmen in Brussels, was “probably on that corner” by the window when they broke in at around half past nine at night about 15 policemen with flashlights, but "without a warrant" and uttering "homophobic insults", according to David Manzheley, 29, the organizer of the orgy.

Imagine that, he says, because the window was left open, and because the police reconstruction of the events tells of a man trying to escape by climbing down the pipe: it was Szájer himself.

The architect of the current Hungarian Constitution, harsh and repressive towards minorities and especially hostile towards the LGTBI collective, a 59-year-old man married to Tünde Handó, the judge who propped up the illiberal turn in Hungary from the highest echelons of the judiciary, closed thus, half-naked in the cold night of the European capital, with bloody hands and a pill of ecstasy among his belongings, three decades of political trajectory with Orbán.

Although in reality he had only breached the strict Belgian confinement regulations, the abysmal contradiction with the postulates of his Government and his party made him present his resignation from the seat in the European Parliament two days later.

His story was revealed by the Belgian press on Tuesday, and Szájer took the “political and personal” consequences through a statement: “I apologize to my family, my colleagues, my voters.

I ask you to evaluate my misstep against the background of 30 years of dedicated and hard work.

The misstep is strictly personal, I am the only one who has the responsibility.

I ask everyone not to extend it to my country or my political community ”.

Szájer had been in the European Parliament since 2004, the year Hungary joined the EU.

In Europe, he made a name for himself as an agile, intelligent and respected politician in the European People's Party (EPP), his political family.

He rubbed shoulders with the Christian Democratic leaders of the continent and became vice president of the popular group.

"He was really a heavyweight," says Márton Gyöngyösi, MEP for a rival Hungarian party, Jobbik.

In Hungary, he adds, he was known as “Mr.

PPE ”: he was the guy who fixed the disagreements between Budapest and Brussels;

the one who filed Orbán's harsh speeches.

"He was like the wolf lord from

Pulp Fiction,

" says Gyöngyösi.

In Budapest the most repeated word about the Szájer scandal is hypocrisy.

The lie of one of the most reputable men in the Fidesz Government.

Szájer is known for being one of the fathers of the Constitution approved by the Government in 2011, molded in the image and likeness of Fidesz's ultra-conservative Christian doctrine.

In it, marriage is only recognized as the union between a man and a woman, thus excluding same-sex couples, transsexuals or single-parent families.

Szájer boasted of having drawn up the Magna Carta on his iPad during his trips to Brussels, Strasbourg and Budapest.

“We all knew that he was gay, that he lived a life of lies, but he was a great politician.

It's a shame that his career ended like this, ”says Zsuzsanna Szelenyi, a former Fidesz member who left the party when the party abandoned liberal ideas and embraced reactionary conservatism.

“If you are from Fidesz, you can't come out of the closet,” adds Klara Ungar, who also dropped out of training due to her authoritarian drift and who years later recognized that she was a lesbian.

Everyone agrees that Orbán has lost his best asset to negotiate with the EU at a time when Hungary has launched its biggest order to Brussels with the veto of community budgets, for its resistance to linking the distribution of funds with respect for the Rule of law.

"The story would have been one more scandal for a member of Fidesz if it had been uncovered in Hungary, where the government handles police and judges, as they have done on other occasions," explains Hungarian investigative journalist Szabolcs Panyi.

But the incident has taken place in the heart of the EU.

"This scandal has gotten out of hand just when he needed his faithful squire to negotiate with Brussels," he adds.

Orbán and Szájer, scholarship holders by Soros

Orbán and Szájer studied Law at the University of Budapest.

The prime minister is two years younger than the former deputy.

The two also got a scholarship to study abroad funded by the Hungarian-born philanthropist billionaire George Soros, now Orbán's nemesis.

And together they founded Fidesz in 1988. "Then Szájer and all of us dreamed of the fall of the USSR, we fought for a democratic Hungary," recalls Szelenyi, 54.

Last Wednesday, Orbán described his friend's behavior in Brussels as unacceptable and indefensible.

"What our representative did has no place in the values ​​of our in-laws," he added in a statement.

The Hungarian opposition, very fractured since Orbán seized absolute power in the Central European country in 2010, is trying to get political profit from the scandal.

The LGTBI community, for its part, criticizes the government's double yardstick, which in recent years has turned homosexuals and transsexuals into its new enemy, depriving them of the right to adopt children or forcing them to register on identity documents according to your biologist sex.

“We respect Szájer's personal life, but it is very cynical that he belongs to a party that makes life impossible for those of the same condition,” says Tamás Dombós, president of Hatter, the main LGTBI association in Hungary.

The fall from grace of one of Orbán's most trusted men comes in low hours for the ultraconservative leader, whose management of the pandemic in this second wave is being progressively questioned.

Every day the nervousness grows before an economic crisis.

The veto of the European budgets of one of the countries that receives the most funds from the EU is also a risky bet.

The defender of illiberal democracy, of Christian Europe, where immigrants have no place, that curtails the rights of the LGTBI community and that considers the Brussels bureaucrats enemies is now at the crossroads that one of the open secrets of his party has come to light, which reduces the credibility of his speech.

Meanwhile, sitting on the couch in the apartment where the orgy took place, David Manzheley assures that he is beginning to be afraid.

He has received threatening calls from foreign officials, he says.

At the party were two other diplomats whose identities have not been disclosed.

And their frequent orgies, some of them massive and that have not stopped during the pandemic, have been attended by several politicians from countries whose regimes are not very tolerant of the gay community and with a double life whose exposure they want to avoid.

"Here they feel freedom," he says.

Source: elparis

All news articles on 2020-12-06

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