BUDAPEST, August 11. /Dunyo IA/. Hungary’s Parliament today elected former head of Supreme Court Andras Baka as the country’s new president, reports Dunyo IA correspondent, citing newspaper “Nepszava.”

In a secret ballot, he received 140 votes, while six lawmakers voted against him. The 73-year-old candidate was nominated by the ruling Tisza party, which holds more than two-thirds of the seats in Parliament.

The new president will take office on August 19. Until then, parliamentary speaker Agnes Forsthoffer will serve as acting president. Baka will succeed Tamas Sulyok, who was appointed president under former Prime Minister Viktor Orban and removed from office last month as part of constitutional changes introduced by the new government led by Prime Minister Peter Magyar.

Andras Baka is a legal scholar who in 1991 became the first Hungarian judge at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg. He served at the court for 17 years. In 2009, Hungary’s Parliament elected him President of the Supreme Court for a six-year term.

His mandate was cut short following a conflict with Viktor Orban’s government. Andras Baka opposed a measure lowering the mandatory retirement age for judges from 70 to 62, describing it as a judicial purge. He later appealed to the ECHR, which ruled that the Hungarian authorities had violated his rights and ordered them to pay him around €100,000.

Prime Minister Peter Magyar said Andras Baka’s career was an example of commitment to democratic rule of law and constitutional principles. According to him, Hungary needs to return to the path of the rule of law and constitutional governance.