2020. 12. 02.

POLITICO Brussels Playbook: Bubble bunga — When privilege backfires — Best defense is offense – POLITICO

BUBBLE BUNGA 4

FAME AND MISFORTUNE: One last time, József Szájer was the talk of the town after years as Hungarian
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s voice in Brussels — and his surprise resignation as an MEP on Sunday. The
Fidesz politician revealed the real reason he stepped aside: He admitted he took part in a “lockdown party” — or
rather a lockdown-violating one, described by Belgian media as a “sex party” with about two dozen men
participating. Maïa de La Baume has the story.

There are surprising and less surprising elements of this story: Police said they broke up the party in an
apartment on Rue des Pierres, literally around the corner from the city center’s main cop station — an unusual
place to make noise of a nature and volume that prompted a neighbor to make a complaint. Less surprising,
given the naked facts, that Szájer said he “did not have an ID” on him when he was apprehended, and instead
“declared that I was an MEP.” Very surprising, though: Fidesz has yet to blame George Soros of being the
architect of the affair.

Here’s Belgian accuracy at its best: According to the press release from the public prosecutor’s office, “A
passer-by reported to the police that he had seen a man fleeing along the gutter … The man’s hands were bloody.
It is possible that he may have been injured while fleeing. Narcotics were found in his backpack. The man was
unable to produce any identity documents.” Szájer, in his statement, identified himself as that man, but denied
the drugs found in his backpack were his.

The end of a career: Szájer apologized for a “personal misstep” and his violation of corona rules “to my family,
to my colleagues, to my voters.” He didn’t apologize for any moral double standards or hypocrisy, which people
may have expected when they heard a founding member of Fidesz and an author of the Hungarian
constitution was caught engaging with two dozen men, pants down. Reminder: Szájer has long been an ardent
defender of what he used to often call the “traditional family.”

For comparison: Ex-EU Commissioner Phil Hogan was forced to resign this summer after an ill-fated golfing
dinner. But Hogan never publicly said playing golf was against the natural order of things, or was only a concept
that wasn’t backed by any reality, or undermined European societies. This excellent thread has more details of
Fidesz’s and Szájer’s anti-LGBTIQ moves (h/t Szabolcs Panyi).

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