Photo: EPA
A former government official and son-in-law of a former president, Péter Magyar transformed in just two years from an obscure civil servant into the leader of Hungary’s opposition.
One Saturday morning two years ago, the 45-year-old lawyer and state official announced on Facebook that he was resigning. He said it was a protest against a system that, in his view, enriched people close to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán at the expense of ordinary Hungarians.
He quickly tried to delete the post—but it was too late. It had already gone viral.
“The die is cast,” Magyar later recalled, echoing Julius Caesar. That moment marked the beginning of his rise—from an unknown official to the man who ended Orbán’s 16-year rule, according to Bloomberg.
Landslide victory
Hungarians turned out to vote in record numbers. With 96.89% of ballots counted, Magyar’s party, Tisza, secured 69.35%, while Orbán’s ruling Fidesz received just 27.64%.
This result gives the opposition a two-thirds constitutional majority, allowing it to overturn amendments previously introduced by Fidesz to cement its grip on power.
In practical terms, this means:
- Magyar plans to remove Orbán loyalists from key positions in courts, the presidency, and state institutions;
- He intends to hold accountable those accused of corruption under the previous government;
- The Hungarian forint has already strengthened to a three-year high against the euro, as investors expect improved relations with the EU, which had frozen funds over rule-of-law concerns.
Who is Péter Magyar?
Magyar was born in 1981 into a conservative family of lawyers and judges. Like many educated young Hungarians, he was drawn to Orbán when he first became prime minister in 1998, largely due to his strong anti-communist stance.
Orbán himself rose from the democratic student movement and became widely known in 1989 for a speech demanding the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungary.
Magyar studied at an elite Catholic school and publicly supported Fidesz throughout the 2010s, even as critics accused the party of undermining democracy and concentrating power.
However, he became increasingly disillusioned with the government’s authoritarian drift and especially its growing ties with Russia.
A turning point came in 2023, when a scandal erupted over the pardon of an accomplice in a pedophilia case with political connections. Magyar’s then-wife, who served as justice minister, lost her position amid the fallout.
Magyar claimed she and the country’s former president were made scapegoats for decisions taken by senior figures in Orbán’s circle.
“The real culprits are never held accountable—they always hide behind women,” he wrote at the time. The couple divorced later that year.
“Party boy” image and campaign
From the beginning of his campaign, Magyar stayed constantly in the public eye. Despite criticism—even from Orbán—about his speaking style, appearance, and what critics called a “Buda party boy” image, he persisted.
For two years, he traveled across the country, building a campaign that deliberately bypassed state-controlled media.
Hungarians, frustrated by rising prices and cronyism, began to recognize him. His insider knowledge of how the Fidesz political machine worked also played to his advantage.
“The ability to endure monotony is what makes you a good politician,” Magyar said in the documentary Spring Wind: Awakening, released during the campaign.
Political scientist Andrea Szabó described his appeal as unprecedented:
“An insider showing self-criticism—Hungarian society had never seen anything like it.”
A shift toward Europe
Magyar has pledged that his first official visits as prime minister will be to Warsaw, Vienna, and Brussels—not Moscow or Washington.
This marks a sharp break from Orbán’s foreign policy, which increasingly distanced Hungary from the EU while strengthening ties with the Kremlin.
His Tisza party also promises to abandon policies favoring large state-backed corporations and instead support small and medium-sized businesses.
Context
As Politico previously noted, Orbán—once a liberal reformer who in 1989 called for Hungary’s separation from Moscow—later reinvented himself as a champion of “illiberal democracy” and one of the Kremlin’s closest allies in Europe.
