{"id":24079,"date":"2026-04-13T06:51:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T06:51:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/24079\/"},"modified":"2026-04-13T06:51:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T06:51:11","slug":"peter-magyar-has-begun-his-purge-of-orbanism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/24079\/","title":{"rendered":"P\u00e9ter Magyar has begun his purge of Orb\u00e1nism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hungary\u2019s election climaxed in spectacular fashion on Sunday evening, as P\u00e9ter Magyar\u2019s Tisza party scored<\/a> a crushing victory over Viktor Orb\u00e1n\u2019s Fidesz, putting an end to 16 years of rule by one of Europe\u2019s most polarising leaders.<\/p>\n

The scale of the Tisza victory, amid astonishingly high voter turnout of almost 80%, was quickly apparent. Orb\u00e1n phoned Magyar to concede defeat just two and a half hours after polls had closed. Speaking to supporters, the outgoing Prime Minister promised<\/a> that Fidesz would \u201cnever, ever give up\u201d and would continue to \u201cserve our country, the Hungarian nation, even from opposition\u201d.<\/p>\n

With Tisza on course to claim a remarkable 138 seats in the new parliament against Fidesz\u2019s meagre 55, Magyar\u2019s victory speech on the banks of the Danube proclaimed<\/a> the dawn of a new era. \u201cTogether, we have replaced the Orb\u00e1n regime, liberated Hungary, and taken back our homeland,\u201d he said, describing the bitter election as a David and Goliath struggle in which \u201clove finally prevailed.\u201d Although \u201cthe state party deployed its entire apparatus\u201d in \u201clies and hatred\u201d, he added, \u201ctoday, the truth triumphed over lies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Magyar recognises that there will be a prolonged struggle to dismantle the network of Orb\u00e1n allies who dominate Hungarian public life. With this in mind, he called on<\/a> the country\u2019s Fidesz-aligned President Tam\u00e1s Sulyok to invite him to form a government and then immediately resign from office \u201cwith as much dignity as he has left\u201d. Magyar also encouraged the president of the supreme court and various other senior public office holders to resign, in order to facilitate \u201cthe independence of the institutions that ensure democracy\u201d so that \u201cHungary will once again be a strong ally in the European Union and Nato.\u201d<\/p>\n

A two-thirds \u201csupermajority\u201d, providing the parliamentary strength needed to amend the nation\u2019s constitution, was seen as a key, if unlikely, condition allowing Magyar to force through such sweeping changes and override the expected blocking tactics of Orb\u00e1n\u2019s political allies. Now, that supermajority has been achieved. Ironically, the disproportionate share of seats to votes \u2014 Tisza is set to have over two-thirds of seats in the new parliament from 53.5% of the total vote \u2014 is a direct consequence of the \u201cwinner takes all\u201d electoral system refined by Fidesz to make Orb\u00e1n electorally invincible.<\/p>\n

This supermajority, and the constitutional power it brings, will cause particular alarm among members of the Orb\u00e1n system. Magyar\u2019s aim to dismantle that system and prosecute its leading figures dovetails with his promised bid<\/a> to secure the release of around \u20ac18 billion in EU funds withheld for claimed rule-of-law and corruption concerns. The incoming leader has long held that negotiations in Brussels over the release of those funds will be his main priority on assuming office.<\/p>\n

Magyar\u2019s campaign has otherwise focused on domestic issues such as the cost of living, in contrast to Orb\u00e1n\u2019s strong focus on geopolitics and foreign policy. A paradox of Magyar\u2019s campaign has been that, while he portrays the Fidesz regime \u2014 of which he was himself previously a member \u2014 as irredeemably evil, he does not openly plan significant changes to Hungary\u2019s stance on the key policies for which Orb\u00e1n has been criticised abroad. Those include a rejection of mass migration, a strongly conservative approach to LGBT issues, and military support for Ukraine (although Volodymyr Zelensky will heave a sigh of relief at the removal of the chief obstacle to EU aid for Ukraine).<\/p>\n

Instead, Magyar wants to focus his energies on purging Fidesz allies from positions of power and reshaping Hungarian public life. Orb\u00e1n will strain every sinew from the opposition benches to hold his carefully constructed power apparatus in place, yet questions will be asked about his own political future. The aura of invincibility which has sustained him as a standard-bearer for the global populist Right, and as the irreplaceable Godfather-figure of Hungarian public life, is shattered.<\/p>\n

Orb\u00e1n has been in opposition before, but never as the representative of a model of government that has been so emphatically rejected at the ballot box. Anti-populist forces the world over will now proclaim, with glee, that his remarkable, controversial model has finally failed, once and for all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hungary\u2019s election climaxed in spectacular fashion on Sunday evening, as P\u00e9ter Magyar\u2019s Tisza party scored a crushing victory…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24080,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16416],"tags":[1065,10406,422,934,3944,10982,3202,350],"class_list":{"0":"post-24079","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-peter-magyar","8":"tag-elections","9":"tag-fidesz","10":"tag-hungary","11":"tag-peter-magyar","12":"tag-populism","13":"tag-pu00e9ter-magyar","14":"tag-uncategorized","15":"tag-viktor-orban"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116396076713463408","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24079\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}