Who is Péter Magyar, the man hoping to oust Viktor Orbán?

[Celerity]

The Tisza Party leader campaigns on ending corruption and bringing back prosperity. Can he win one of central Europe’s most consequential elections?

https://www.thetimes.com/world/europe/article/who-is-peter-magyar-hungary-elections-viktor-orban-dw2zrvmsc

https://archive.ph/YDD87


Peter Magyar in August last year
Peter Maygar/Facebook

Surrounded by a sea of flaming torches, the man hoping to topple Viktor Orban in the forthcoming Hungarian election is leading the jubilant crowd in a chant of “tick, tock, tick, tock”. “I have bad news for Europe’s richest and most corrupt prime minister,” he declares. “Time is working in our favour.” Peter Magyar, 45, is already on his fourth rally of the day, in the southern market town of Hodmezovasarhely. Although hoarse and suffering from what an aide describes as a mild fever, he mounts his usual relentless attack on his foe, calling for Hungary to again become a “functioning and humane country”.


Magyar in Hodmezovasarhely during a rally
Marton Kallai for The Times

Sixteen years after Orban, 62, a friend of Presidents Putin and Trump and the scourge of Brussels, came to power and set out to turn his homeland into a self-proclaimed “illiberal democracy”, there is change in the air. Polls put Magyar’s Tisza Party an average of nine to ten points ahead of Orban’s ruling Fidesz party and one last week gave it a lead of as much as 23 points. This is despite what Tisza claims are attempts by the authorities to smear the party as a risk to national security and a tool of Ukrainian intelligence and other malign foreign actors.



Magyar has also warned his supporters that a sex tape may emerge featuring him and a former girlfriend. A still allegedly from the video has been circulated showing a pile of white powder on a table clearly intending to imply he was taking coacine. He has denied this and subjected himself to a drug test at a laboratory in Vienna, which proved negative. But who is Magyar and can he really win one of central Europe’s most consequential elections since the collapse of communism? And, if Orban is beaten on April 12, will he willingly cede power?


Viktor Orban has been Hungary’s president since 2010
Marton Monus/Reuters



Magyar spent much of his life behind the scenes as a civil servant, diplomat and latterly as head of a student loan company. A member of Fidesz since the early 2000s, Magyar was married for 17 years to Judit Varga, who was Orban’s justice minister before stepping down in July 2023. The couple had divorced a few months earlier. Magyar burst on to the political scene in March 2024 when he announced plans to form a new platform for people dissatisfied with Fidesz and the existing opposition, long divided and ineffective. The catalyst was a scandal over a presidential pardon granted to the former director of a children’s home accused of covering up child abuse. Varga had countersigned the pardon and subsequently withdrew from public life.

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[rampartd]

1. he is not orban

we might be getting a preview of 2028 when trump loses that third term.

[Solly Mack]

2. ...

[yellow dahlia]

3. It would be so great if this guy won. Tilt the world order back to real democracy.