All sorts of people are grateful to Peter Magyar for bounding into the arena of Hungarian public life. Journalists, chiefly. Many a grizzled, lugubrious Hungarian hack had tears of gratitude welling as Magyar demolished the tedium and predictability of Hungarian party politics: Viktor Orban trampling a feeble collection of bunglers and chisellers, known as the opposition, again and again.
Of course, the foreign correspondents were even more elated. Vilifying Orban? Step this way for your eulogy and hosannas, you smooth-talking cosmopolitan. Magyar is certainly deserving of attention; he’s fought a remarkable one-man blitzkrieg.
In February, no one outside the halls of government knew who he was, and if they did, they thought of him as the ex-husband of Judit Varga, the justice minister. He was nonexistent, politically. Then in the European parliament elections four months later, his party came second, obliterating opposition parties that had been around for decades.
Magyar’s campaign was conducted on a ‘We hate Fidesz’ basis and platitudes about ‘doing things better’
Who is he and how did he do it? Magyar is 43, of patrician Budapest stock, a lawyer by training. He was a diplomat, an EU expert. He did a bit of banking, then ran the student loan organisation for a couple of years. A man that the governing party, Fidesz, felt they could trust in state concerns.
That ended in February, in the wake of the scandal caused by President Katalin Novak’s pardon of a man involved in covering up paedophile activity in a children’s home. Fidesz had pushed the family values ticket relentlessly, to the exclusion of almost everything else, and like so many political parties before them, it had blown up in their faces. Varga, who had also signed off on the pardon, was forced to resign along with Novak.
Magyar went public with a secret recording he had made of a conversation he had with Varga, in which, after some prodding, she talked about Antal Rogan, one of Orban’s lieutenants, turning up at the Prosecution Service to intervene in a corruption case.
What was Magyar’s motivation? He professed outrage at how his ex-wife had been treated (he sneered about people ‘hiding behind the skirts of women’). I doubt if Varga felt it helped her situation in any way. She responded by accusing Magyar of terrorising her and of domestic violence. Ironically, Varga and Magyar, who have three children, used to be featured in glossy magazines as the model Fidesz couple, balancing career and kids. The secret recording had been made the previous year, suggesting Magyar had been plotting to jump ship for some time, perhaps because he sensed he was slipping down the food chain.
Magyar had turned on Fidesz and didn’t hold back on the bean-spilling, giving interview after interview about how corrupt and incompetent the party is. What he was saying was nothing new. The opposition had been incessantly ranting about how many of Hungary’s richest entrepreneurs were on too friendly terms with the government. But as a turncoat, and someone who gives good interview, Magyar made a huge impact.
In April, I went to a rally organised by Magyar outside the Hungarian parliament. It was well organised and well attended. Magyar claimed there were 250,000 attendees, but I’d put it at a third of that, at best. The atmosphere was noticeably different to most ‘opposition’ rallies called by the ‘left’. More Hungarian flags and flag-waving. People from small towns and villages holding up signs announcing their provenance. There was poetry and poignant songs.
The opposition, especially the Budapest opposition, had typically viewed the countryside as replete with simpletons, whom they blamed for Fidesz’s electoral success. Not Magyar. He was openly hunting Fidesz voters. Classy rally, I thought, great sound system, someone has deep pockets, but you don’t have a political machine, and the European parliament elections are only two months away. There’s a mountain of paperwork and structure drudgery to tackle. See you two years down the road at the next general election.
How wrong I was. Magyar’s solution? To snatch a political party off the shelf. The Respect and Freedom party, whose Hungarian acronym comes out as Tisza, the name of the second largest river in Hungary, was registered in 2021, but had been completely inert. Magyar negotiated a role as vice-president, and the Tisza party ran in the European elections.
Those elections were conducted in a mid-term by-election atmosphere. There was an unprecedentedly high turnout at 59.36 per cent, and while Fidesz could make the traditional ‘good result for us’ claim, the result was indisputably a warning. They lost two seats, although they still had a majority. The Tisza party got more than a million votes, some 30 per cent of the total cast, and won seven seats. However, Magyar did more damage to the old school leftie-liberal-green opposition. A new hard-right party, Our Homeland, got one seat.
There were also local mayoral elections on the same day. In Budapest’s XII district, almost the only capital district with staunch Fidesz support, Gergely Kovacs, the leader of the Hungarian Two-Tailed Dog party, ended up as mayor. The Dog party is the Hungarian version of the Monster Raving Loony party, but more intelligent, witty and persistent. Their slogan: ‘More of everything, less of nothing.’ It sounds even better in Hungarian. During the televised debate on state television, featuring the various parties, the Dog party representative, Bruti, a comedian, was the star of the show (not that he had much in the way of competition). Kovacs, a graphic designer, had been hustling and clowning in the XII district for years, but if there was an unmistakable warning for Fidesz that voter patience is wearing thin, it’s Kovacs’s triumph.
He has good looks and presence, if not charm. He was recently dragged out of a nightclub by bouncers
What exactly are Magyar’s policies? How will he act? Well, we don’t really know. His campaign was conducted on a ‘We hate Fidesz’ basis, and a sprinkling of platitudes about being more in the ‘centre’ and ‘doing things better’ and ‘honesty’. Ukraine? He has stated that he will follow the government line. Magyar is in his honeymoon period, unsullied by a record in office.
However, along with his admirable ruthlessness, there can be no doubt he’s a real politician, as he has already reneged on one electoral pledge. During the campaign, although he led the Tisza party list, he insisted repeatedly, forcefully, that he wouldn’t go to Brussels as an MEP. Now – surprise, surprise – he’s off to the fleshpots of Brussels.
Magyar is still the new shiny toy. He rarely wears a jacket, let alone a tie. Check out the trainers. He has good looks and presence, if not charm (a couple of weeks ago he stormed out of a television interview with arguably the most skilled and convivial interviewer in current affairs, Egon Ronai – not a very statesmanlike move). He was also recently dragged out of a nightclub by bouncers following a scuffle.
Let me remind everyone that during the 2022 general election, Peter Marki-Zay was hailed by the international media as if he were Jesus of Nazareth, when he was the candidate for prime minister, fronting a united opposition. ‘Wow, he speaks English. He’s worked around the world. He’s bound to slash Fidesz’s vote and humble Orban.’ But Fidesz got their largest ever majority in 2022, and Mr Marki-Zay is currently the mayor of Hodmezovasarhely, population 44,009, a long drive from Budapest.
Magyar has been a real upset. Some grandees in Fidesz will be peeved that their tranquil, laidback existence has been shaken up by his arrival. But there is probably one individual in the party’s ranks who feels some gratitude to him.
That would be Orban, grateful to Magyar for making the game a bit more lively.
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