Péter Magyar has achieved the impossible. The opposition leader and his party Tisza won the Hungarian parliamentary elections with an overwhelming majority. He thus defeats Viktor Orbán who, with his Fidesz party, has been in power in Hungary for the past sixteen years.
Magyar won despite Fidesz’s rich campaign coffers, despite the electoral system that favored Fidesz and despite the Hungarian media that is largely controlled by Orbán.
For two years, Magyar visited villages and towns to meet voters. He stood for hours giving speeches on market squares, walked in a procession across Hungary and visited the countryside always forgotten by the opposition.
In this way, Magyar managed to channel the grumpy about sixteen years of Orbán. The voter was done with the corruption in the circles around Orbán, done with the politics of fear that prevailed under Orbán and done with the erosion of healthcare, education and the economy by Orbán’s government.
Magyar ran a marathon, but due to the unfair election battle it was a race with tied feet.
He won that marathon with an unprecedented lead over his competitor Orbán. With more than 95 percent of the votes counted, Tisza has a two-thirds majority in parliament. He needs that majority to actually get something done in the state institutions hijacked by Fidesz. The turnout was also unprecedented: 77.8 percent of the voting population went to the polls.
Early in the evening, Orbán congratulated his opponent Magyar. The Prime Minister resigned to the result, which is “painful but clear” and said he would continue from the opposition so as not to abandon his 2.5 million voters. “We never, ever give up.”
In his victory speech in Budapest on the Danube, Péter Magyar spoke of “an unprecedented mandate.” According to him, the Hungarian people have opted for a “regime change”. He called on “the puppets and pillars of the system” to resign.
Voters and relatives in line at a polling station in the Hungarian capital Budapest.
Photo Marton Monus/REUTERS
A voter with a pet in line at the polling station in Budapest.
Photo Marton Monus/REUTERS
Incumbent Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán shows his passport before casting his vote with his wife Aniko Levai at a polling station in Budapest.
Photo Attila Kisbenedek/AFP
Hungarian voters in London cast their votes at a polling station in a hotel.
Photo Henry Nicholls/AFP
Hungarian voters in the United Kingdom could also vote at polling booths in a London hotel.
Photo Henry Nicholls/AFP
Voters queue up outside a polling station in Budapest.
Photo Marton Monus/REUTERS
A polling station is being prepared in the town of Bekescsaba, in southeastern Hungary.
Photo Peter Lehoczky/MTI/AP
A line outside a polling station in the Hungarian capital Budapest. Voter turnout in the parliamentary elections reached a record high.
Photo Marton Monus/REUTERS
Voters in Budapest for the Hungarian parliamentary elections this Sunday.
Photo Marton Monus/REUTERS
Clap for the radical right
The result is also a blow to radical right parties around the world. Since Orbán came to power in 2010, his version of the “illiberal state” – a sovereign state that turns away from liberal freedoms and multiculturalism – has been a blueprint for success for the radical right from the United States to Poland.
Orbán showed how the independent rule of law could be effectively dismantled by appointing partisan judges, taking over the public media and turning them into propaganda channels and winning election after election by creating an enemy image: Brussels, migrants, LGBTI people, philanthropist George Soros and, during these elections, Ukraine.
But after sixteen years and four consecutive elections, the success of this tactic has come to an end.
In Brussels, on the other hand, the flag will go up. For years, Hungary was the tormentor of the European Union. Hungary used its veto to block important EU decisions, such as recently the 90 billion euros in EU loans for Ukraine. Trump’s United States will lose a radical right ally, but Russia in particular will lose an important strategic ally. In exchange for cheap Russian oil and gas, Russia received EU documents and information from Hungary and Hungary relaxed sanctions against Russian oligarchs.
The question is what Orbán will do now. At the beginning of the election campaign, he already indicated that he was the longest-serving Prime Minister of the European Union, but that before that he was the longest-serving opposition leader (2002-2010). Will he abdicate the Fidesz throne and withdraw? Or will he go full-on opposition?
If Orbán chooses the opposition, Magyar will have a lot to fear from his opponent. Even after Magyar’s victory, most media will remain in Orbán’s hands and more importantly: Fidesz has hijacked all top positions within state institutions. From the Public Prosecution Service to the Constitutional Court, the media council and financial authorities. Magyar can expect opposition from all sides that will not be gentle. But with the two-thirds majority in parliament he can change the constitution and replace the Fidesz loyalists within the state institutions.
Moreover, Magyar’s voters are divided. They united behind Magyar because they believed he could win against Orbán. Now that this has been achieved, the question is whether they will also agree with his policy. Because the Tisza voter consists of a broad political spectrum: from the queer community in Budapest to far-right anti-establishment voters in the countryside. And until now, Magyar has kept quiet about what he thinks about migration, LGBT rights and aid for Ukraine.
The question is also what kind of leader Magyar will be. The former Fidesz member and ex-husband of former Fidesz minister Judit Varga called himself a ‘positive populist’ in an interview with NRC and, like Orbán, is a right-wing conservative. Moreover, conversations with employees show that he can be authoritarian in private and he reacted very irritably to critical journalists on more than one occasion.
In contrast to Orbán, who consistently said he spoke for the majority of Hungarians, Magyar addressed all Hungarians in his speech on the Danube: “Hungary wants to be a country where no one is stigmatized because of different opinions, faith or orientation.”
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Orbán rival Peter Magyar passes through Hungary: ‘I stand for positive populism’
