Hungary's Viktor Orban Ousted By Former Loyalist Peter Magyar In Landslide Victory That Shakes Populist Movements Worldwide

Populist leaders around the world are bound to react in shock at the defeat of Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban by a former loyalist, Peter Magyar, although it was becoming increasingly clear that his 16-year-old regime was running out of steam. The landslide win of the Tisza party led by the 45-year-old Magyar has shifted the ground in a country that had grown weary of governmental corruption, declining quality of life, and creeping decrepitude in health and education. In the end, the institutions that Orban refashioned and packed with loyalists to serve his cult politics, notably the judiciary, media, and think tanks, failed to shore up his fortunes at the polls. The loudest message that emerges from his ouster and the rejection of his Fidesz party is that an illiberal democratic order, which he liked to articulate publicly, has no self-preserving capacity in a free election. Magyar is a conservative politician and not a standard bearer for free migration, centralised European policymaking or a Eurocentric bureaucracy. His victory is, therefore, the result not of a sharp ideological shift leftward among Hungarians but a course correction to remove a leader who had grown to like his own voice so much that he could not hear disapproving citizens. The election in Hungary drew support from like-minded leaders, including the US vice-president, JD Vance, who campaigned for him and expressed sadness at the result. Orban’s exit comes after a similar verdict delivered four years ago by voters in Slovenia on their leader, Janez Jansa, who happened to be his admirer.

Peter Magyar’s win puts Hungary on the hard road to administrative reform, and the incoming leader has made it clear that he expects the country’s president, Tamas Sulyok, an Orban ally, and many public officials to resign; the state TV and radio broadcaster is to be suspended to bring about neutrality, and there will be regular press conferences. Raising labour productivity will be a big challenge. His emphasis on getting 19 billion euros of frozen EU funding released is a major economic plank, as is a foreign policy that is supportive of Ukraine but not lacking in pragmatism towards Russia. Notably, the Tisza leader wants Russia to end its war on Ukraine. Equally, both the US vice-president and Magyar have spoken of maintaining positive relations. Long-running populist governments lapse into echo chambers, which were the hallmark of Orban’s tenure. It is unsurprising that the successor wants to restrict prime ministerial terms to two by law. Undoing negative consequences of populism, such as packed judiciaries, compromised universities, media, and think tanks, will be hard work. How Hungary does it will be watched by other restive nations where the national discourse has been hijacked to prop up illiberal rulers. It is not the model that populists hoped to see.