Former justice minister Judit Varga said on Saturday that she is retiring from public life, resigning from her mandate as an MP and from her position leading the EP list of the governing Fidesz-Christian-Democrat alliance. Varga announced her decision on her Facebook page in response to the resignation of President Katalin Novák. Varga said that since the change in political system, the validity of the president’s individual pardon decisions had required the countersignature of the justice minister. “I continued the more than 25-year-old practice of the justice minister in acknowledging the president’s clemency decision,” she said, adding that she assumed political responsibility for countersigning the president’s decision.