Oldal 37 [37]
“THE ‘ETERNAL CANDIDATE’ — THAT WAS ME”: INTERVIEW WITH KAROLY BARD
duly reported in the press. But I was never close enough to any of the parties in
power to have them nominate me.
V. Z. K.: You were nominated as a member of the International Criminal Court
in 2006, however. Why weren't you elected?
K. B.: It was pretty clear from the beginning that I as a European male candidate
stood little chance. And quite soon I regretted saying yes to the nomination.
Nevertheless, the election procedure commenced and I had to leave for New York
and the Hague to start campaigning. What was truly surprising to me was that
the Ministry for Foreign Affairs was so underprepared and disinterested in the
election. There were three or four Hungarian winemakers in the Hague at the time
and the Ambassador was more interested in advertising them, while the others were
ecstatic about the tulip exhibition and found no time to help. In New York, every
nominee was accompanied by their ambassador, I on the other hand, was assisted by
a nice young woman who, however, was barely above the rank of a doorman at the
embassy. But all in all, it wasn’t a big deal. I got over it quite quickly. I thought of the
hussle of moving to the Hague and the kind of cases I would have had to deal with...
Career as an ‘attorney’
V. Z. K.: Before getting back to your academic career, allow me a small detour: I
must admit, I was a little surprised to learn that you also worked as an attorney.
K. B.: Well, yes. Look, when I left the Ministry I only had a part time job
at the Department for Criminal Procedure. You know, this all goes back to the
eighties when Janos Németh somehow arranged for the amendment of the Act
on higher education. This is how teaching communities were able to form law
offices. For example, the members of the 1 working community of lawyers were
János Németh, Imre Békés, Lajos Vékás, Gábor Faludi, Ferenc Kratochwill and
myself, later, we were joined by Péter Polt. I started working in this community of
lawyers in 1987 because at the time a succesful defence of ones candidate of the
Academcy thesis was acknowledged in lieu of the bar exam. I actually had some
very interesting criminal cases and the pay was really good compared to what I
made as a lecturer. However, | left this community in 1990.
Then later I got back into the profession when I left the Ministry and a childhood
friend asked me to join his law firm. He worked on civil law and commercial law
cases, but sometimes a few criminal cases also cropped up. Think: corruption
cases of foreign companies or where an Austrian CEO had inadvertently shot the
beater during a hunt in Hungary. However, besides COLPI (Constitutional and
Legal Policy Institute) I hardly had time for my work as an attorney. After a while,
I only assisted from time to time when the case had an international dimension.
+35 +