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Hungarian President Tamas Sulyok said Saturday he will sign a constitutional amendment that cuts short his own time in office, marking a significant step in Prime Minister Peter Magyar's sweeping effort to dismantle the institutional legacy of former strongman Viktor Orban.
Sulyok, a close ally of Orban, announced his decision in a Facebook video, saying he had carefully weighed his legal options and his conscience before concluding he had no viable path to block the measure.
"I am fulfilling my obligation under the Fundamental Law," he said. His mandate is set to expire at midnight Sunday.
Magyar's center-right Tisza party, which swept to power in April on a promise of "regime change" after Orban's 16 years in government, pushed the constitutional amendment through parliament on Monday.
Magyar had repeatedly called Sulyok and other top state officials Orban's "puppets," and welcomed the president's announcement as clearing the path for his government's agenda. "The final obstacle to our joint decisions taking effect has been removed," he said.
Agnes Forsthoffer, the speaker of parliament, will serve as acting head of state until lawmakers elect a new president within 30 days.
The amendment goes well beyond ending Sulyok's term. It reinstates a mandatory retirement age of 70 for constitutional court judges, a provision that will force out Peter Polt, the court's president and another figure associated with the Orban era.
The amendment also restores the court's authority to review budget legislation, introduces term limits for members of parliament and establishes a new National Asset Recovery and Protection Office tasked with combating corruption.
Watchdog organizations had long alleged that corruption became entrenched under Orban's tenure. Magyar cast the package as a restoration of accountability.
"With these decisions, we are restoring something that the Orban regime has tried for many years to take away," he said, describing the changes as ensuring that power can be limited, public assets recovered and the state returned to the service of its citizens.
The changes have drawn sharp criticism from Orban's Fidesz party, which staged a protest last week against what it called an "autocratic" act, an irony not lost on observers given that Fidesz itself faced sustained accusations of democratic backsliding during its time in power.
Orban reacted in stark terms on Saturday, declaring that "the last barrier has fallen" and warning that "tyranny is no longer a threat, but a reality."
The criticism has not come only from Orban's camp. Human Rights Watch said the constitutional tinkering was "reminiscent of the Fidesz era," raising concerns that Magyar's government was using similarly blunt tools to reshape institutions.
Sulyok himself, while acknowledging he had no legal basis to refuse his signature, accused the Tisza party of trampling on the "fundamental values of a free society" for the "sake of power" and warned of the end of "democratic rule of law" in Hungary.
Under Hungary's constitutional framework, the president holds limited powers when it comes to constitutional amendments, and cannot veto them outright. The office may refer amendments to the constitutional court for review, but only on strictly procedural grounds. If the president does not act, a constitutional amendment becomes law within five days.
That narrow legal margin left Sulyok with little room to maneuver despite his public objections, underscoring the extent to which Magyar's parliamentary majority now controls the machinery of Hungarian constitutional life.
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