Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, on Nov. 7, looked confident.
Budapest was hosting the European Political Community gathering, with Orban hugging it out with the continent’s leaders whose standing at home leaves them little leeway to challenge the Russian-friendly prime minister.
Orban’s standing at home, practically unchallenged since 2010, has for quite some time allowed the prime minister to dictate his will to Brussels, Paris, and Berlin, with mixed success.
Yet, Orban’s grip on Hungary looks weaker than ever, with a formidable challenger, Peter Magyar, set to pose a threat come election time in April 2026.
Any Hungarians around who can provide additional colloquial context on the challenger?
He is the ex-husband of a former Justice Minister, he was a CEO and other exec at some government-friendly major firms, and thus part of the middle-inner circle of Orban’s party (Fidesz) and the related business networks.
He had enough 1-2 years ago, but kept silent when his ex-wife was still in a high position, to not damage her career. After she had to resign, he went to the biggest opposition Youtube channel, and gave a viral interview, confirming corrupt practices that people already suspected.
During spring he saw his popularity rising mainly in social media, so he turned from an influencer to a politician, and pulled together a party. They won a lot of seats in the EU parliament election in June, he is also now sitting in there, part of EPP, and strongly supported by Manfred Weber.
Latest polls show his party head-to-head with Fidesz, so the government is panicking, trying to attack him on all fronts, but he seems to be taking it well, and continues to gain popularity. He recently had a reddit AMA in r/hungary, which became top post of all time - he seems to be loved by the young crowd.
He is different from other opposition leaders, as he positions himself as a christian center-right politician (instead of left/liberal), while being against the Russia-friendliness and corruption of Fidesz/Orban. This resonates a lot with some of Orban’s former voters, and those who stayed away from voting in the previous years. He is also well dressed and good looking 40s dude, not an overweight 60s man like Orban and other government politicians, showing a strong contrast - Orban supposedly started excercising and losing weight due to the competition.
Overall it’s good to have him, anything is better than Orban. Peter Magyar’s also not perfect, he was part of some corrupt deals (which he openly admitted) and seems a bit arrogant and enjoy the spotlight, but if this is what it takes to get rid of Orban, I’m all for it. The country is in bad shape economically, he’s not going to solve that in a few years, but at least we could get going in the right direction - keep an eye out for Hungarian elections in 2026.
Interesting! Thank you for the information! And yeah, while “center-right” isn’t something I’m enthusiastic about, tbh it’d be hard to do worse than Orban, imo.
Adding to slaacaa’s fantastic summary, “unites behind” might be a bit of a stretch; there are a miriad of ways to be in the opposition, and it’s not like the US where you essentially pick from two options (maybe three, but the rest is quite insignificant), but there’s like half a dozen parties opposing Fidesz, the governing party. Unfortunately, due to having vastly different approaches and opinions, these parties could never unite properly and there have always been some infighting between them, especially during elections, which doesn’t really give the best impression to voters. They have tried to unite twice already and both attempts led to another 2/3 majority for Fidesz.
Now that finally there is another competitor who seems to have more support (while having about the same amount of ideas and plans for the future), these opposition parties are not all 100% supportive, further diluting votes against the current regime.
It’s still slightly more hopeful than the previous times, because finally Tisza, the new party seems to have more supporters than the largest opposition party that still runs a previous, horribly failing prime minister’s wife.
But saying that the opposition finally unites… Is a bit of a stretch in my opinion.