Laszlo Solyom, a jurist that assisted resource Hungary in its own change to a free-market freedom after the autumn of Collectivism in 1989, supervising his nation’s Constitutional Courthouse and after that functioning as its own head of state coming from 2005 to 2010, perished on Oct. 8 in Budapest. He was actually 81.
Marton Hovanyi, an elderly speaker at Eotvos Lorand College, where Mr. Solyom when showed rule, affirmed the fatality yet performed certainly not indicate the source, pointing out just that it followed a lengthy health problem.
Mr. Solyom, a regulation lecturer in Budapest, belonged to a production of Main International pundits that, starting in the 1980s, prepared for the change far from Collectivism with the buildup of nongovernmental companies that increased the range of metropolitan culture.
He was actually a leading have a place in the Danube Group, an ecological union that resisted dams as well as various other jobs along his nation’s primary river — a type of demonstration cloaked as environmental advocacy.
He was actually a creating participant of the Hungarian Autonomous Discussion forum, which surfaced after 1989 as the nation’s primary center-right gathering. As well as he joined the Resistance Sphere Dining Table Talks, a collection of appointments to consider the political as well as lawful platforms for post-Communist Hungary.
By then he had actually cultivated a credibility for his sharp scholarship on personal privacy civil liberties, understanding that created him an apparent selection to become some of the starting judicatures on Hungary’s Constitutional Courthouse, the substitute of the U.S. High Court. He joined it in 1989 as well as a year later on ended up being primary judicature.
In that part he assisted resource Hungary towards the policy of rule as well as personal civil liberties. The judge overruled death penalty, assisted private privacy defenses as well as spoke up for free of charge pep talk.
A scholarly, booked number that when said to a recruiter, “I don’t create pals quickly,” Mr. Solyom left behind the judge in 1998, enthusiastic to go back to his scholarly job.
But seven years later, he was called back to public life by the Hungarian Parliament, which elected him the country’s president.
Though the presidency is, on paper, largely ceremonial, and while Mr. Solyom promised that he would be “restrained” in office, he soon asserted himself as the country’s political consciousness, demonstrating and reinforcing the norms and mores that he said were necessary in a healthy democratic society.
His term coincided with a tumultuous time for the country. Its economy was growing steadily, and in 2004 Hungary joined the European Union. President George W. Bush, eager to find European allies, hailed Hungary as a shining example of a “New Europe,” in contrast to countries like Germany and France, whose leaders had rankled Mr. Bush for criticizing the invasion of Iraq.
But Mr. Solyom kept Washington at a measured distance. When Mr. Bush traveled to Budapest in 2006 to mark the 50th anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution — an uprising against the country’s Communist leaders that was brutally suppressed by the Soviet Army — Mr. Solyom endorsed a fight against terror that was “in line with international law and to honor international human rights,” a comment that many in the news media took as an unsubtle dig at his guest.
That same year Hungary faced a period of political unrest, including rioting in the streets, after Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany admitted that he had lied about economic forecasts to improve the chances of his party, the Socialists, in national elections.
After days of demonstrations, Mr. Solyom called for Mr. Gyurcsany to resign. He refused, and even survived a vote of no confidence in Parliament. Mr. Gyurcsany remained in office three more years.
The episode turned many Hungarians against the political establishment; in a national poll in 2006, Mr. Solyom was ranked as the country’s most trusted politician, though he earned just 23 percent approval.
Close behind him, at 19 percent, was Viktor Orban, a former prime minister whose party, Fidesz, had supported Mr. Solyom’s candidacy for president in 2005. Yet when it came time for re-election, in 2010, Mr. Orban threw his decisive support to another candidate, Pal Schmitt.
Mr. Orban and Fidesz, with their populist, anti-establishment message, dominated the elections that year. Mr. Orban returned as prime minister, a position he still holds. In 2011 he led the passage of a new Constitution that Mr. Solyom said eroded many of the safeguards he had spent decades building.
“The drafting process had lost its dignity by descending to the level of common parliamentary wrangling,” he wrote in Heti Valasz, a weekly newspaper. But, he added, “Hungary will stay among the European democracies even under the new Constitution.”
Laszlo Solyom was born on Jan. 3, 1942, in Pecs, a city in southern Hungary, a son of Ferenc Solyom, a lawyer, and Aranka Lelkes.
As a high school student he took part in street protests during the Hungarian Revolution, though he escaped the political reprisals that followed. Later, as president, he refused to give a state award to Gyula Horn, a former prime minister who, as a young man, had supported the Soviet invasion in 1956.
Mr. Solyom received a law degree in 1965 from the University of Pecs and a doctorate in law in 1969 from Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, East Germany. He returned to work as a researcher at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
He later on taught law at Eotvos Lorand University and Peter Pazmany Catholic University, both in Budapest.
He married Erzsebet Nagy in 1966. She died in 2015. He is survived by his daughter, Beata Solyom; his son, Benedek Solyom; 11 grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.
After leaving office, Mr. Solyom created a scholarship for young Hungarian researchers to study overseas. He also became a reliable critic of the Orban government but gradually withdrew from social lifestyle, especially after the death of his wife. A quietly religious man, he spent his last years translating works dealing with Roman Catholic canon rule.
