The district court in Bucharest rejected for the second time the claim of László Tőkés, in which he requested the annulment of the presidential decree revoking his Romanian state award, according to the summary of the judgment, which was published on the website of the district court on Monday.

Előd Kincses, László Tőkés' lawyer, told MTI: this time the district court found that it was not competent to examine the presidential decree revoking the order of merit.
The lawyer considers the verdict strange because the same district court has already examined and ruled on it once, but the Supreme Court did not accept this verdict and sent the case back to the first instance with the request that the district court examine it again.

"This also means that the decision of the Supreme Court has not been implemented," the lawyer stated.

He also added: if the Supreme Court is consistent, it will send it back to the first instance. According to the lawyer, the Romanian judiciary is playing for time in this case. They are waiting for Klaus Iohannis's presidential mandate to expire, so that the verdict will be handed down after that, which will certainly be unfavorable to the head of state.

According to him, it is clear that the presidential decree is illegal, because the law regulating awards only allows for the withdrawal of recognition in two cases, and neither of them exists. The order of merit must be revoked if the recipient is legally sentenced to imprisonment, or if he commits acts that make him unworthy of recognition. However, László Tőkés' order of merit was revoked not because of his actions, but because of an opinion, and the freedom of opinion is guaranteed by the constitution.

László Tőkés received the knighthood of the Order of the Star of Romania from President Traian Basescu on the 20th anniversary of the revolution for his role in sparking the 1989 revolution in Temesvár, which led to the fall of the Ceausescu dictatorship. However, this award was revoked by Klaus Iohannis in March 2016. The withdrawal of the recognition was initiated by Prime Minister Victor Ponta in 2013, after László Tőkés suggested in his presentation in Tusványosi that Hungary should assume a "protecting power" role for the sake of Transylvania, as Austria did in the case of South Tyrol.

MTI

MTI Photo: János Vajda