The opponent Péter Hungarian needed to sweep the polls to dethrone the ultranationalist Viktor Orbán and undertake the dismantling of the apparatus created by whoever was the prime minister of Hungary for 16 years. He more than achieved it: his party, Tisza, will have 138 of the 199 seats, more than two thirds of the Chamber, those necessary to reverse, as he has promised in the campaign, the “Orbán regime”, as he calls it. TO Fideszthe party until now in power, has only 54 left. It will complete the composition of an exclusively right-wing Parliament Nuestra Patria, of the most extreme right.
Vladimir Putin loses his most valuable ally in the EUa prime minister at his service, whose team whispered to the Kremlin about what was happening behind closed doors in Brussels. Donald Trump has bet on a losing horseafter having redoubled its support for Orbán with a vice president, JD Vance, coming to his rescue in the final stretch of the campaign. AND the ultra european familyfrom the French Marine Le Pen to the Alternative for Germany (AfD) by Alice Weidel, or the Spanish Santiago Abascal He licks his wounds for the unmitigated defeat of his reference figure.
Magyar is still a blank page. Conservative and former co-religionist of Orbán, he comes to power as the unifier of a wide electoral spectrum. He spoke for more than an hour on the magical night of Budapest, before an imposing sea of torches from his followers and while the entire capital took to the streets to celebrate the fall of Orbán. He broke down some keys of his immediate government action. Others are assumed, based on what was said in the campaign.
“The place of our homeland was, is and will be in the European Union“Magyar assured before the euphoria of his compatriots. Instead of boos, as was the case with Orbán’s Europhobic harangues, each phrase alluding to Brussels was endorsed by his followers chanting “Europe, Europe.” There is longing for return to the European family. First of all, from the perspective of unlocking of the 18,000 million euros that Brussels is holding Hungary for attacks on European values. More or less what happened with Polandafter the electoral victory of the pro-European Donald Tusk. The Hungarian economy, weakened by low growth, needs that reunion.
Magyar followers celebrate the victory at the polls next to the Danube, this Sunday in Budapest. / FERENC ISA / AFP
Beyond that interest, the young and urban vote Hungarian, Magyar’s mainstay, demand the end of the obscurantism and the negative rhetoric deployed by Orbán. It is a cry that unites a country that has banished its image of division. Magyar’s success is explained in the historically high participation: 79.5% of voters came to vote, the highest rate in democracy for a country that was behind the Iron Curtain.
“We will settle our disputes with the neighboring countries“, was another of Magyar’s phrases after his victory. He was referring not only to Poland, after the open hostility shown by Orbán to his prime minister, Donald Tusk, but above all to Ukraine. If one poster has literally invaded the streets of Budapest in this campaign, it is the image of Volodymyr Zelensky and Magyarwith a gangster-like gesture. Fidesz, Orbán’s party, has campaigned against Ukraine, which it accuses of interrupting Russian oil transit to Hungary. The Hungarian economy depends on Russian supplies. And, for Orbán, a Magyar victory was equivalent to place his country at the service of President Zelensky, as he threatened in the campaign.
kyiv and Brussels expect Magyar to unlock the 90,000 million euros in loans frozen by the outgoing Government, as is the last sanctions package Europeans against the Kremlin. Budapest is expected to open its hand. But it is also known that Magyar will not support even a sending troops to Ukraine nor its fast track entry to the EU.
Orbán made the signs of his identity fences built on its border during the 2015 migration crisis to stop the passage of columns of asylum seekers towards community territory. In the following years he has practiced the slogan of “zero reception” to the asylum. With Magyar in power, Hungary will not leave the bloc of the EU’s most restrictive partners in migration matters. Quite the opposite. In his campaign, he has made clear his intention to further restrict the arrival of irregular immigration and to close the tap on temporary workers. It is very close to far-right positions, led by the Italian Giorgia Melonibut also of the increasingly restrictive line applied by the European People’s Party (EPP), of which Tisza is a member.
In his 16 years in power, Orbán has not only built a kind of “party-state”, with almost absolute control over the mediathe justice and the main public bodies, part of their concept of “illiberal democracy”but also reformed the Constitution according to a concept of christian values that it claims to represent. He defined the family as the union between a man and a woman, restricted abortion and harassed LGTBI groups with a Law for the Defense of Minors that, among other things, relates sexual diversity to pederasty.
Viktor Orbán addresses his supporters and acknowledges defeat. / ATTILA KISBENEDEK / AFP
From Magyar we cannot expect a shift in the direction of the full equality of the rights of these groups. But no frontal attacks either. As for the media, rapid measures are expected on public television and the rest of the media landscape, currently under the effects of the call “gag law” of Orbán and the almost exhaustive control over 90% of the sector.
Magyar broke away from Fidesz to take refuge in the acronym of a then dying party, Tisza, which he revitalized, determined to fight against the web of corruption of the “Orbán system”. He acted under the social impact caused by a pedophile cover-up scandal that shook the Government. Among the protagonists of a scandal that mobilized Hungarian society was the then Minister of Justice, Judit Varga, Magyar’s ex-wife, with whom he had three children. Varga ended up resigning, Magyar abandoned Orbán’s ranks and launched the race to remove him from power. Along the way there were some compromising recordings for his ex-wife and clarifying the role played by those in power to cover up the case of pedophilia. But also a dcomplaint for mistreatment subsequently generating all kinds of hoaxes and fakes, including sexual ones, against the now winner and face of change in Hungary.
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