No, there is no intention to fire everyone.<\/p>\n
So how will you do it?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s easy. Who were the political nominees? And who did any unjust, illegal things?<\/p>\n
We have to scrutinize, we have to pay attention, we have to have a close look. It will not happen in one day. But we don\u2019t want to fire anybody who was part [of the regime] as a civil servant, or a doctor, or a policeman. These are good guys. Our task is to rebuild and to strengthen the rule of law, the checks and balances. And to change, of course, the puppets of Orb\u00e1n: the President of the country, the president of the prosecutor\u2019s office, the constitutional court, the media authority. But not the average, normal citizen workers. That\u2019s not our intention at all.<\/p>\n
Last night, at the premi\u00e8re, you said, \u201cThe dance is just beginning\u201d\u2014meaning, basically, that you\u2019ve just pulled off this very difficult upset election victory, and now comes the even harder part, which is actually governing, holding your coalition together, delivering on your promises. You have supporters on the left, supporters on the right, supporters in the middle. And there will inevitably be some conflict, and some disappointment, among your supporters. How will you manage that?<\/p>\n
You\u2019re right\u2014now there is a honeymoon feeling in the country, and the honeymoon could go away very, very quickly.<\/p>\n
I think you\u2019ll get longer than most people get.<\/p>\n
Yes, but it\u2019s our responsibility and task to get it longer, and to explain to the people the real situation, the exact situation of the country, of the economy, of the health-care system, the education system. It\u2019s our huge responsibility to bring back the E.U. funds, to strengthen the checks and balances, to rebuild, to reunite the country, and to be very honest that we won\u2019t be perfect\u2014we are just human beings\u2014and if we make any mistakes, to be honest and admit it, [and accept] the consequences. That will also be a huge difference from the Orb\u00e1n regime, when there was no responsibility or consequences of any crime, any political mistake.<\/p>\n
I think if you treat the people like adults, it\u2019s not easy, but everything can be explained. And the more difficult decisions, the more sensitive decisions\u2014we\u2019ll see how long this honeymoon feeling will last, and, of course, I\u2019m prepared for the change, for the [approval] numbers lowering. It\u2019s quite normal. But, if you are honest, you will survive the more difficult times as well, I\u2019m sure.<\/p>\n
We will start with modifying the constitution, and we\u2019ll write in the constitution that anybody can be a Prime Minister in Hungary only for two terms\u2014maximum eight years. It will be a sign that we don\u2019t want to do the same\u2014to build a power machine\u2014but just to govern, just to serve the country as long as possible. But maximum eight years.<\/p>\n
So you can guarantee that you will be there only eight years?<\/p>\n
Yeah, absolutely. Or four, we\u2019ll see. But in the constitution it will be written that eight years is the maximum.<\/p>\n
What are some other things that will be in the constitution that will check your power, limit your power? And is that new constitution being written right now?<\/p>\n
[At this point, S\u00fcmeghy jumped in. \u201cTo avoid the point of the constitution at this table,\u201d she began, steering the conversation toward a more general topic. Under Orb\u00e1n, she said, Hungarians had \u201cexperienced lack of trust in our institutions\u2014we were infantilized.\u201d But Magyar, she felt, was starting to change this mentality, by treating his supporters as grownups.]<\/p>\n
Well, if I can just treat all of us like grownups: I\u2019m not trying to sneak in news-related questions, but I really think that it\u2019s important to discuss what happens next. Everyone in the world is curious. The whole film, the whole campaign, was based on the premise that there were these key inflection-point years in Hungarian history: 1956, 1989, 2010, and now 2026. And so this moment you\u2019re about to embark on\u2014what you have repeatedly called a peaceful regime change\u2014it raises some big and maybe difficult questions. Because this message\u2014that we have won this big mandate for change, and we will rewrite the constitution\u2014that was also Orb\u00e1n\u2019s message, after 2010, and now of course we look back on that as a disaster.<\/p>\n
So the big question in my mind is: how do we know that this is not a moment like that, where the voters are handing you power and you will use it to lock in your own power? How can people really be sure that there won\u2019t be an abuse of power, a betrayal?<\/p>\n
[Smiling.] I really respect your try to reformulate the question. And I really understand that you would like to know the details. But the difference between us and the Orb\u00e1n regime, one of the differences, is that it\u2019s not P\u00e9ter Magyar who will make decisions alone. So you are asking a question which will be decided by the Hungarian parliament, discussed with the Hungarian society\u2014the professionals, the lawyers, and the political groups in the Hungarian parliament. So there is nothing to be decided at this time. So I\u2019m not able to answer your question.<\/p>\n
[To be a responsible leader] I think, everything starts in your mind, in your brain. It\u2019s you who should control yourself. It\u2019s not up to the constitutions, to be honest.<\/p>\n
You mentioned that everything went wrong [after 2010] because of the constitution. No, it\u2019s an average constitution. It\u2019s because of the power, because of the Prime Minister, because of the mafia. It\u2019s not because of the laws. I\u2019m a lawyer\u2014I\u2019m ready to modify the constitution or the electoral law. But it\u2019s up to the people, up to the political persons in power. You have to control yourself in your mind first. And to build a community that will control you as a Prime Minister, as a [leader] of the Party.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"No, there is no intention to fire everyone. So how will you do it? It\u2019s easy. Who were…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63681,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16416],"tags":[11638,422,934,3712],"class_list":{"0":"post-63680","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-peter-magyar","8":"tag-authoritarianism","9":"tag-hungary","10":"tag-peter-magyar","11":"tag-prime-ministers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116544323094826962","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63680","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=63680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63680\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}