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VIKTOR ZOLTÁN KAZAI
organized a parliamentary committee hearing with the purpose of establishing
that Pál Solt and I were to blame. I was accused of having purportedly deceived the
poor candidates with my tremendous expertise and authority. It was a farce and
every single participant in this hearing knew that I was not to blame. Needless to
say, I was pretty hurt by all this.
In light of these events I took the decision to resign. I knew that Pál Vastagh
wouldnt accept my resignation. So I told him that I wished to resign when we
were sitting on a plane back from Paris and I knew he would be forced to listen to
me. We had to keep my resignation a secret for a while because we knew that the
opposition would have a field day with it. Eventually it came out and it caused a
minor scandal in Parliament.
Allin all I can say that had I been able to work under more favourable conditions,
I probably would have stayed on at the Minsitry. But in fact, the change wasn’t all
that drastic, since I continued with the codification work as an external expert.
V. Z. K.: You were state secretary between 1990 and 1997 and personal advisor
of the Minister of Justice from 1999 to 2007. Is it only our present perspective, that
it is surprising that so many governments had trusted your expertise, irrespective
of political affiliation?
K. B.: I believe I was the only state secretary who did not receive any awards
from any government. In my view, this is testimony to my professional integrity.
The personal advisor position, however, is another story. Ibolya David contacted
me after the 1998 election and asked me to return as state secretary for the
administration. I told her that I would be happy to provide expertise, but I did
not want to work as a state secretary anymore. This is how I became the personal
advisor to the Minister of Justice. This meant traveling to Vienna with the Minister
to the anti-corruption events of the UN where Ibolya David held her speech, then
quietly left the room and I took questions. I was well versed in the subject because
of my work at the Constitutional and Legal Policy Institute. Then when the MSZP¬
SZDSZ government came to power, I automatically kept my title of advisor.
V. Z. K.: Not only were you responsible for the codification work to achieve
compliance with the ECHR, but you also represented the government in complaint
procedures initiated against Hungary. Moreover, your book entitled Human rights
and criminal justice in Europe was published a few years later, discussing the fair
trial jurisprudence of the ECtHR. In light of all this, I would have thought that
sooner or later you would end up at the Strasbourg court as a judge. Did your name
ever emerge among those of the nominees?
K. B.: Of course it did. Every time. The ‘eternal candidate’, that was me. Already
in the nineties there were aspirations to send me to the Commission, but Jözsef
Antall said they needed me here. The job went to Imre Bekes. Then from time to
time someone suggested that I should be sent to serve at the Court, which was
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