Pal Schmitt

"Landep News"

Pal Schmitt

Hungarian president Pal Schmitt on Saturday announced he would not resign his office in spite of the scandal caused by his stripping of the doctorate degree at the end of an investigation into the originality of his work. Earlier this week, a find-finding committee decided that the allegations related to Schmitt’s plagiarism were correct, and on Thursday he lost the title, which was withdrawn by Semmelweis University in Budapest.
The president told the Hungarians on television on Friday that there was no link between the plagiarism scandal and his role as head of Hungarian state. He added that he had not been contacted by the university for the past 20 years about the thesis. He offered to write a new draft of his thesis on Olympic Games.
The scandal forced many of the political leaders to make political statements on the situation. The Socialist leader Atilla Mesterhazy said that Schmitt was not worthy of holding the presidential office, while the Jobbik leader said that he should leave before he felt the wrath of the people.
Fidesz leader and Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban said that it was up to the president to decide what to do, and that no pressure should be applied on him. However, an influential member of Fidesz said on condition of anonymity that the time for Schmitt to walk in honor has gone.
This comment could suggest that the president has already lost the support of Fidesz, whose member he is. This does not mean though that the party would vote to strip him of his presidential office.
The president of Hungary is a largely symbolic and representative office. The president is elected by the parliament by two thirds of the votes, and can only be deposed by two thirds. Fidesz is the party that has now the two thirds required.
The presidency is said to hold a symbolic character and to impose a role model and a moral standard in society. This is what the political landscape is criticizing about Schmitt, demanding for his resignation. Recent polls show that 90 percent of the Hungarian population back that demand for his resignation.
The scandal broke in Hungary in January 2012, when a group of organizations claimed that more than 197 out of 215 pages of the doctorate thesis was copied from the Bulgarian scientist Nicolay Grigoriev. Grigoriev’s daughter said that her father never mentioned any cooperation with the Hungarian president.
The issue has even a conflict of interest component, as it became clear that the members of the thesis committee were from the Hungarian Olympic Committee, whose president Schmitt was.
The president denied that he was guilty of plagiarism, and said at some stage of the scandal that in a work like that some “common core material” must be used, and that he had mentioned Grigoriev name and work at the references.
Pal Schmitt was a Hungarian fencer who won two medals of gold in the Olympics in the 1980s, and was an ambassador of the country, a member of the parliament, and in August 2010 he was elected by 263 votes to 59 the president of the republic.
The president told the Hungarian media that he would fight to redeem his honor, and that the work he had written 20 years ago was “honest” and “useful.”

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