For 16 years, the power of Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party was almost incontestable in Hungary.
One of the agents of that power was for a long time Péter Magyar, precisely the politician who this Sunday inflicted a historic defeat on Orbán in the parliamentary elections and who has everything in his favor to become the next Hungarian prime minister.
After years in which Orbán has been seen as Vladimir Putin’s great ally in Brussels, where he has blocked many of the European Union’s initiatives against the Russian president and opted out of Ukraine, Magyar addressed his supporters in Budapest after his victory and proclaimed that Hungarians have said “yes to Europe.”
Magyar has promised Hungarians that their country will no longer be under Russian influence and that the “puppets” of the “Orbán regime” will leave the institutions.
However, Magyar himself was once another member of the Fidesz party, in which he came to have prominent responsibilities.
From the leadership to dissidence
Born in 1981 in Budapest, into a family of the Hungarian upper bourgeoisie with deep political connections, Magyar seemed destined for the top of power.
His grandfather was a magistrate of the Hungarian Constitutional Court and a very smartly-liked figure in the country thanks to the television program about judicial cases that he starred in.
His godfather, Férenc Madl, was president of Hungary between 2000 and 2005, precisely as a member of Fidesz.
Following family tradition, Magyar graduated with a law degree from an elite Catholic school. It was there, he told BBC correspondent Nick Thorpe, that he first met Orbán.
A then young Magyar was convinced after hearing Orbán quote Churchill and affirm that it is smartly-liked to have left-wing ideas when young and conservative ones in adulthood.
A few years later, he joined Fidesz.
Since then, Magyar began to perform different functions in the party alongside Judith Varga, whom he married and who became Orbán’s Minister of Justice.
After holding various positions in the European Parliament in Brussels and in various state agencies, Magyar returned to Budapest.
In 2024 he rose to fame and became a well-known face for Hungarians after publicly denouncing the Orbán government for the pardon granted to a man convicted of covering up sexual abuse of minors, a case that ended up causing the resignation of Varga, from whom he had separated the previous year and who was then one of the most prominent figures in Fidesz.
She even sounded like a possible successor to Orbán.
A fed up conservative
What began as a series of inflammatory posts on Facebook quickly transformed into a political movement he named Tisza (Respect and Freedom).
In a matter of months, Magyar achieved what the fragmented Hungarian opposition could not in years: mobilize the masses.
Despite sharing the conservative ideology of Fidesz, he did not hesitate to denounce the serve watch over to which the party had subjected the institutions and corruption in the country.
With his direct style and youthful appearance, Magyar built on social networks the image of a man fighting against the Fidesz machine.
This attracted both urban youth opposed to Hungary’s isolation in Europe and rural people disappointed with the economic situation.
Magyar, whose last name means “Hungarian” in Hungarian, knew how to connect with many of his compatriots.
The attempts of the media related to the government to present him as a leader spiteful for his break with Varga and for having been removed from the core of power did not stop his popularity and the party he founded, Tisza, was quickly gaining followers, until it became the popular threat against the power of Fidesz.
The trend was confirmed when in the European elections in June 2024 it obtained more than 30% of the votes and emerged as the second political force in the country.
Appealing to the same values of homeland and tradition that Orbán had embraced, but denouncing the corruption increasingly perceived by Hungarians, Magyar made his pro-European conservatism a viable alternative to the prime minister and his alliance with the Kremlin.
The authorities, however, tried to put an end to his budding career.
In June 2024, shortly after his electoral success in the European elections, proceedings were opened against him after he threw the phone of a man who filmed him dancing in a Budapest nightclub into the Danube.
Magyar said the Prosecutor’s Office should have been as quick to open anti-corruption investigations as it had been against him in that incident.
Finally, the European Parliament refused to remove his immunity and the case came to nothing.
His resounding victory in this Sunday’s elections confirms that he has found the formula to achieve what for a long time seemed impossible in Hungary: removing Orbán from power.
In his first message after his victory he said that “those who stole the country have to face the consequences.”
But critics wonder if a conservative leader like him will be able to truly transform the Hungary he will inherit from Orbán or if his changes will be nothing more than rhetorical and cosmetic changes.
Their decisions on aspects such as the situation of the non-heterosexual population or the vote on European aid packages to Ukraine could soon begin to clear up doubts.
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