How Peter Magyar is stirring up Hungary’s opposition

The word “Messiah” is used more often in Hungary when it comes to Peter Magyar – the man who provokes Prime Minister Orban and can bring thousands onto the streets. Who is he? And who follows him?

This is Budapest spring: everything is blooming in Olimpia Park, a five-minute walk from the Hungarian Parliament. Clearly visible on the other side of the Danube: Budapest’s Castle Hill, the Carmelite Monastery, the official residence of the ruling Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

Robert Laszlo squints in the sun, laughs, asks: “Is it about the Messiah again?” He knows his stuff there. Laszlo is a political analyst at the independent Hungarian think tank “Political Capital”: “Hungary is known for being happy to wait for a messiah,” he says.

Nothing new – but from the inner circle

This has little to do with Easter, which has just passed. It’s about Peter Magyar, 43, lawyer, ex-diplomat, now politically active, pretty successful from the start, one of the “Orban system” – until recently. Magyar has completely broken with this, he now calls Hungary a “mafia state” with Viktor Orban as its leader.

Magyar shows evidence of what everyone has always suspected. “Nothing new,” says analyst Laszlo, but now it comes from someone in the “inner circle.” Not one from the first or second row, but credible enough to be dangerous for Viktor Orban and his Fidesz party.

“Something” is happening to Hungary

“Messiah”: The 52-year-old Hungarian Erzsebet-Ana takes this as a compliment and speaks of a “Budapest Spring” in the political sense. Since Peter Magyar appeared on the scene in mid-February, “something has happened” with Hungary, “a spring atmosphere, people are discussing things on the street again, in circles of friends.”

Again after a long time. Demonstrations against Orban became demonstrations for Magyar. Of course she goes there again. And many people she knows who don’t live in the capital, Budapest, have organized carpools to be there.

With charisma – and with a plan

“Messiah”: Political expert Laszlo sounds a little more skeptical. Even before the last election there was a source of hope for everyone who wanted to vote for a change. Peter Marky-Zay, the conservative who relied on a broad opposition alliance. But: Orbán won and has ruled since then with a two-thirds majority, even if a little more than 50 percent of the votes cast were enough.

However, Laszlo lists a few important differences. Magyar has charisma – and apparently a plan beyond the initial successes. He has a clear message and speaks clear language. He is a man of the middle, that is: middle-class, conservative, from an old Hungarian family in which values ​​still apply. So someone who is electable by the majority in Hungary, not a leftist.

“Traitor” to “own family”

Still a “messiah of the left”? This is how the Orban propaganda tries to vilify him, after a few weeks of helplessness. They call Magyar a “traitor” to his “own family.” And that doesn’t just mean the party family. Magyar was married to Judit Varga, until recently one of the two model women of the Fidesz party. Until – presumably with Orban in the background – their stellar careers were over. This was probably also the trigger for Magyar to enter politics against Orban.

It was about the pardon of an accomplice of a pedophile school principal. President Katalin Novak signed the paper and then Justice Minister Judit Varga countersigned. The scandal sparked mass protests against the Orban government – protests that hit hard. Because the protection of children is part of the holy of holies in the Fidesz party program.

Ex-wife as Orban’s pawn sacrifice?

President Katalin Novak had to resign. And Judit Varga’s political career was also halted – she was supposed to become Fidesz’s top candidate for the European elections. Orban and everyone else responsible were just hiding “behind women’s skirts,” Varga’s ex-husband Magyar attacked the Fidesz government.

That sounded concerned about the partnership, but at the same time there was also deliberate talk about a war of the roses between the ex-spouses. It was fueled by Magyar’s last piece of evidence of the corruption of the “Orban system”, an audio recording of an argument with his then estranged wife Varga. It was about files from the public prosecutor’s office, which, according to Magyar, Orban’s confidants wanted to have disappeared.

The first celebrities join

Also a scandal, but for Ervin Nagy it was just the “cherry on the cake”. What is more important is the dissatisfaction of broad, especially middle-class circles with the Orban government. Nagy is one of the few celebrities who have publicly sided with Magyar and helped organize his demonstrations.

Nagy is an actor – in the theater, especially as a beloved teacher figure and thus the star of a popular TV series. Magyar Prime Minister of Hungary? Sometime after Orban? Nagy can well imagine this and speaks of a turning point like before the popular uprising in Hungary in 1956.

Analyst Laszlo is slowing down: the Orban government is still stable. Even if Magyar’s timing is good, it is just before the European elections, in a weak phase for the Orban government. A respectable success in the European Parliament elections could help Magyar. But for that to happen, an already registered party would first have to make him a candidate. Because he himself has not yet founded his own party; That would now come too late for the EU elections.