Budapest savors Orbán's fall from power after 16 years

BUDAPEST, Hungary (CN) — Hope for change and national revival vibrated Monday on the streets of this grand city on the Danube River, a day after more than 3 million Hungarians voted to end the 16-year reign of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a beacon of the global far right and the European Union’s longest-serving leader.

“Yesterday we made history, we changed it, and we hope for the best,” said Victoria Szanto, a 33-year-old computer programmer who flew to Budapest from Germany to cast her ballot. “We had to bring down this state.”

She celebrated along with hundreds of thousands of others in Budapest, Hungary’s liberal capital, long into the night. “I’ve never seen a party like this,” she said. “People were happy — but like, really happy.”

The hopes of Hungarians like Szanto rest on the shoulders of Péter Magyar, a 45-year-old upstart politician and former Orbán ally. He turned an anti-corruption message into a landslide win over Orbán and his Fidesz party in Sunday’s parliamentary elections.

Magyar’s feat was set to have repercussions across Europe and the globe due to Orbán’s consequential alliances with U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

For Brussels, Orbán’s been a pernicious thorn in its side and spoiler who’s helped foment anti-EU parties across the bloc and blocked key policy initiatives, most notably sending aid to Ukraine. Magyar has pledged to reset relations with the EU and Ukraine.

By Monday, near-complete results showed Magyar winning 52.4% of the ballot (3.1 million votes) and Fidesz 39.1% (2.3 million votes). An extreme-right party, Our Homeland Movement, was set to become the only other group in parliament after getting 5.7% of the vote.

Magyar’s trajectory to Hungary’s highest office was a remarkable tale of political savvy that saw him defect from Fidesz in February 2024 and turn into a whistleblower against his former wife, friends and allies.

A lawyer by training, he was born into a prominent legal family in Budapest. His great-uncle was a former Hungarian president, his mother a judge and his grandfather a celebrity Supreme Court judge who gave legal advice on television during the communist era.

His profile inside Fidesz rose in large part due to his marriage to Judit Varga, a former justice minister under Orbán until she resigned in 2023 over a pardon scandal linked to a pedophile case.

Magyar and Varga were married for 17 years and have three children. They got a divorce in March 2023.

After Magyar implicated Varga in a corruption case, she publicly accused her ex-husband of a yearslong pattern of domestic abuse, including physical violence, psychological terror and blackmail. Magyar dismissed the accusations as false. Varga has remained mostly silent since Magyar’s rise to power.

In going after Fidesz, Magyar has had plenty to target and reveal: Orbán has long been accused by watchdog groups, EU institutions, intellectuals, journalists and critics of governing Hungary in an autocratic and deeply corrupt manner.

Magyar built a nationwide anti-Orbán movement under the umbrella of his new party, Tisza, the name of a southern river rich with symbolism for Hungarians.

At a three-hour news conference Monday, a pugnacious Magyar promised to steer Hungary away from Russia and toward Brussels. He also vowed to purge corruption from state institutions and demanded Orbán allies in high offices, including President Tamás Sulyok, step down. He said he would hold Fidesz officials accountable for corruption.

Magyar’s anti-corruption measures likely would unlock about $20 billion in EU funds Brussels has been withholding from Hungary due to corruption concerns.

In dismantling the Orbán regime, Magyar said state-controlled television and radio, long denounced as noxious propaganda spigots, would be suspended.

But on some hot-button issues, Magyar remained ambiguous and did not diverge from Orbán’s stances. For example, he did not commit to expanding LGBT rights, easing border restrictions against asylum seekers or fast-tracking Ukraine’s entry into the EU.

Magyar, who describes himself as a conservative, remains a bit of a mystery even for many Hungarians who voted for him.

His backers spanned the spectrum and included liberals, communists, social democrats, greens, conservatives and independents. They really only had one thing in common: They wanted Orbán out and saw Magyar as their only bet.

“I don’t know him, but I only hope that he will be better,” said Péter Varnai, a 67-year-old electrical engineer in Budapest, out for a walk with his dog Monday afternoon.

Varnai said he could not predict what Magyar would do in office, but he believed his government would certainly be better than another four years of Orbán.

“The old group has stolen everything,” he said. “It was in power for too long of a time. Sixteen years! Sixteen years!”

Magyar’s youth and intelligence were pluses and he had surrounded himself with a team that seemed competent, Varnai said.

His relief was shared by many others in Budapest, long a stronghold for liberal and left-leaning parties and a city that Orbán, with his country roots, was known to dislike. Fidesz garners its bedrock support in the countryside, towns and smaller cities.

“I was telling my husband, ‘If Orbán wins, I’m going to sell my house and I’m going away from here,’” said Victoria Szabo, the 56-year-owner of Pitém Pite, a cafe under Fisherman’s Bastion, a historical fortress near Buda Castle on a hill overlooking the Danube. “My husband didn’t want to leave!”

She said life under Orbán had become intolerable and that the country’s growth had been stunted.

“They just want everything for themselves and nobody else,” she said. “We just wanted to be finished with the Orbán regime.”

She felt Orbán was bad for her business too, which relies mostly on tourists sightseeing the historic district around her cafe. Orbán’s reputation, she said, made Hungary unappealing.

She felt foreigners think “Hungary’s not a good country, there’s lots of corruption here, everybody lies, everyone wants to steal from others.”

But she too was uncertain how much Magyar could actually achieve for the country.

“I really don’t know what they can do,” she admitted. “I know it’s going to be very hard in the next few years, maybe the next ten years.”

Of course, not everyone in Budapest was thrilled about the change.

One of them was Balint Viraghalmy, a 48-year-old guitar repairman with a studio on the Buda side of the Danube.

As a lifelong Fidesz supporter, he was among a minority in Budapest. Tisza won throughout the city.

“They are wrong,” Viraghalmy said, shaking his head at the wild jubilation displayed after Orbán’s loss as throngs of people stormed streets, waved flags, shouted, drank and honked car horns late into the night.

“In not much time, they will realize their mistake,” he said. “Very soon.”

He reckoned Magyar would implement policies favored by Brussels, such as more privatization of public services and assets and the adoption of the euro currency. Hungary uses its own national currency, the forint. On Monday, Magyar said he would consider scrapping the forint.

“We will sell our country very soon,” he said.

He said younger voters, who were a major force behind Magyar’s win, failed to understand the benefits of the Orbán model of government, a system referred to as NER, an acronym standing for Nemzeti Együttműködés Rendszere, Hungarian for “System of National Cooperation.”

Orbán’s nationalist conservatism embraces both state intervention in the economy, including generous social programs and price controls, and engineering social life toward a worldview that views gay people, foreigners, liberals and internationalists as enemies of traditional Hungarian values.

Today, though, many Hungarians see NER as standing for the rot in Orbán’s Hungary: a deep state-like network of political and business elites who have shaped the country and enriched themselves.

“Many young people believe the narrative that NER is a bad thing,” he said. “But I think it’s not. They will find out.”

He added that Hungary had been swept up in the jubilation of political change before, such as when socialists took power in the early 2000s, and those governments had ended badly. In 2010, Orbán seized power due to deep dissatisfaction with failures by previous liberal and socialist governments.

“Young people haven’t seen the best of what Fidesz has done,” he said. “We will pay the bills very soon and these young people will be surprised in a year or two and they will be disillusioned.”

Courthouse News reporter Cain Burdeau is based in the European Union.

Follow @cainburdeau