Péter Magyar admired Viktor Orbán. In his room in Budapest, when he was young, he had a poster of the ultra-conservative Hungarian prime minister. Later, Orbán’s party. But two years ago he slammed the door. This Sunday, a social majority, largely opposed to him ideologically, has chosen this 45-year-old lawyer to demolish the bunker, its former leader.
Magyar is elite. His father was a lawyer, his mother held prominent positions in the Supreme Court and his sister is a judge. Ferenc Mádl, president of Hungary between 2000 and 2005, was his grandmother’s brother. And his grandfather was Pál Eross, a well-known presenter who gave legal advice on television.
During a stay in Germany during his years as a law student, he established a close friendship with Gergely Gulyás. Today Gulyás is Orbán’s chief of staff. When he was in college he started dating Judit Varga. They married in 2006 and lived in Brussels: she as a Fidesz MEP, he in Hungary’s permanent representation to the EU. Magyar held several intermediate positions in organizations controlled by Fidesz, but never reached the top.
Orbán appointed Varga as EU minister in 2018, and between 2019 and 2023 she held the Justice portfolio. During her tenure, Magyar’s mother was appointed vice president of the judiciary.
“A little nepotism,” comments ironically a person who shared three years of training in the courts with Magyar and who prefers to remain anonymous. “He liked to argue with the veteran judges, but there was nothing special about him; I would never have thought he could go that far,” he adds.
That he is a product of Fidesz has given Magyar credibility among voters to take on Orbán. Learn about the strategies, traps and dirty laundry of the leadership that has ruled the country with an iron fist for 16 years. Magyar works in a similar way. He is strategic, he is controlling and measures every step he and his team take.
In a campaign video he shared a plan with Machiavellian echoes to corner Viktor Orbán and his closest team, his former colleagues, in the hemicycle of the European Parliament in 2024. He wanted to force the prime minister to do something he has never done with members of the opposition: shake hands. He did it. Orbán’s surprised face was evident.
In his campaign feature film released to the public today, Péter Magyar told the story of his famous EP shot in 2024 shaking hands with Viktor Orbán.
— Csaba Tóth 🇸🇴 (@tothcsabatibor)
Magyar has expressed disdain for traditional opposition parties. He preferred to set up a new formation than join any of them. Virtually the entire constellation of small formations that came together in the 2022 elections to confront Orbán’s electoral system, aware of their separate weakness, has withdrawn to pave the way for the candidate.
Tisza (acronym for the Party of Respect and Freedom, and at the same time, the name of the second most important river in Hungary) is made up of militants from across the political spectrum. Magyar has assembled a team of specialists around him, with well-known figures such as foreign policy expert Anita Orbán (no relation to the prime minister) and former Shell executive István Kapitány.
Ideologically, this Sunday’s winner is more like Fidesz than his own voters. Unlike the traditional opposition, it has reappropriated patriotic and ultra-conservative symbols that Orbán had monopolized, such as the national flag, anthem and motto. God, country and family. His surname, which means Hungarian, fits his nationalist profile.
He has actively avoided speaking out on issues such as LGBTI rights, but is unlikely to make a U-turn on Fidesz. Nor on issues like immigration. He is pro-European but sovereign. He is not anti-Ukraine, although he will not actively support it either. He is not Proputin and, however, he will not cut off relations with Russia.
Only 11% of his followers identify as conservative. 43% declare themselves liberal and a third, left and green. Orbán is more popular than his party among his base. With Magyar it happens the other way around. Many of those who voted for him this Sunday reject his personality, his past, the violent machismo of which his ex-wife accused him and his way of relating. They are not convinced by his aggressiveness, his ideology, the control he exercises over the party and his reactions to criticism. But at the same time, they consider that these qualities are precisely what were needed to defeat Orbán.
That goal has already been achieved. People by people, in a tireless campaign with up to six rallies a day, he has managed to get Hungarians to trust him with their support to dismantle Orbán’s system. It wasn’t simple. The electoral system is designed to the millimeter to favor Fidesz.
Now he will have to use his skills as a jurist to undo the institutions, the media and the economy. How Tisza, someone who has cut his teeth in Fidesz, will govern the country and his party raises reasonable doubts among some analysts.
