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Hungary elects its first female president
The National Assembly has appointed Katalin Novak,
from Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s party, to serve a five-year term
Katalin Novak, 44, was elected as the new president of Hungary on Thursday, becoming the youngest and first-ever female incumbent in the role in the country’s history.
The National Assembly appointed Novak, who had been serving as the vice president of the ruling Fidesz party, to a five-year term after she delivered a rousing speech calling for national unity.
Novak defeated economist Peter Rona in a vote that was split down party lines within the legislature. Her 137 votes to Rona’s 51 secured her success. She replaces Janos Ader, who was also a member of Fidesz. Ader was unable to run for president again due to constitutional limits that permit an individual to serve only two five-year terms.
Prior to her election, Novak had served as a member of the National Assembly since 2018 and the minister for family affairs within Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s fourth government from 2020 to 2021. While serving as the vice president of Fidesz, she was tasked with overseeing economic support for Hungary’s populace, including housing subsidies, state-backed home loans, and tax cuts.
Speaking prior to the vote, Novak pledged to defend the country’s constitution, which was drafted and approved by Fidesz, showing her support for the continued implementation of key elements of Orban’s agenda. Officially, the role of president is a non-partisan position, the duties of which are largely ceremonial, but the election marks a victory for the prime minister’s party.
The opposition United for Hungary party had condemned Novak’s nomination for president, accusing Fidesz of picking “a party soldier for the third time in a row for one of the most important public offices in Hungary.”
“Those saying that I would be just a puppet in this position degrade not me personally, but women in general. They cannot [imagine] that a woman can be a sovereign public [official] capable of making autonomous decisions," Novak was quoted by Hungarian media as having said.
Congratulations, Katalin. God bless you!
Russian court gives Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny
another 9 years in prison
By Clyde Hughes
March 22 (UPI) -- A Russian court on Tuesday sentenced opposition leader and high-profile Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny to nine more years in prison on charges of fraud and contempt of court that critics say are intended to quash dissent.
The court's ruling means that Navalny, who was already in prison for a parole violation technicality, could now be behind bars for a total of 12 years, his legal team said.
Prosecutors charged Navalny with stealing more than $4.7 million in donations that were given to his political organizations for his own personal use.
The court's sentence says that Navalny must spend the time in a maximum security prison.
"The whole world knows that this trial has nothing to do with the law," Ruslan Shaveddinov, a Navalny supporter said, according to The Washington Post.
"We see that Alexei will be held in prison for many more years, they hope to do that. We can't turn a blind eye to this as we see that everything is headed toward a very sad end of our country."
The judge on Tuesday also fined Navalny about $11,000. Navalny can appeal the court's decision.
Navalny had been serving a 2½-year sentence for violating a 2014 suspended sentence for embezzlement while recovering from poisoning in Germany in 2020. Critics said the embezzlement conviction was also politically motivated.
The Russian government is suspected in his poisoning, which medical officials said was carried out with the Soviet-era nerve agent novichok.
After he fell ill on a flight, Navalny spent 32 days in the hospital, most of them in the intensive care unit. He was later taken to Germany for treatment, where doctors identified the novichok.
Democracy, in Eastern Europe, is very different than elsewhere. Instead of winners having the most financial backing, Eastern European winners are the ones who can avoid prison long enough to win. Myanmar also uses this model.
Lawyer says Russian critic Alexei Navalny missing after prison transfer
By Simon Druker
June 14 (UPI) -- Alexei Navalny is missing and his whereabouts are unknown following a prison transfer, a spokesperson for the Russian opposition leader said Tuesday.
Navalny had been in custody, but his lawyers were told he was no longer at the prison when they attempted to meet with him Tuesday, his spokesperson Kira Yarmysh said on Twitter.
"Alexei Navalny @navalny was transported away from the penal colony No. 2. His lawyer, who came to see him, was kept at the checkpoint until 14.00, and was then told: 'There is no such convict here.' We do not know where Alexei is now and what colony they are taking him to," Yarmysh Tweeted.
"Of course, neither Alexei's attorneys nor his relatives were informed about his transfer in advance. There were rumors that he was going to be transferred to the high-security penal colony IK-6 'Melekhovo,' but it is impossible to know when (and if) he will actually arrive there."
The Kremlin critic is serving a 12-year prison sentence, after having nine additional years tacked on in March to an existing sentence.
His lawyers were also arrested at the same time, while Yarmysh said the sentence would make it "practically impossible" to keep in contact with Navalny.
"The problem with his transfer to another colony is not only that the high-security colony is much scarier. As long as we don't know where Alexei is, he remains one-on-one with the system that has already tried to kill him, so our main task now is to locate him as soon as possible," she wrote on Twitter Tuesday.
Navalny, who has been previously arrested by Russian authorities, survived being poisoned in August of 2020, an act that has been widely blamed on the Kremlin.
His anti-corruption organizations were also labeled "extremists" last year, effectively shutting them down. And then in late January, Navalny was added to Russia's terrorists and extremists list.
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