Hungary Election: Viktor Orban Concedes a Big Defeat to Peter Magyar~ Trump said But "I love Viktor"
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| Peter Magyar, leader of the opposition Tisza party, in Budapest following the partial results of the parliamentary election on Sunday.Marton Monus/Reuters |
Finally The Putin's Stout faithful servant is leaving. A man that made Hungary famous for the wrong reasons.These time he was in power shows many things. One I think is the rush in which the EU made it a member because he was bordering Russia. Instead now they are doing the opposite with Ukraine.For Four years Ukraine is been asking and at the same time showing to the EU they can be good members. With Organ there were no secrets from Putin. It got so bad when Close door security meeting were held Orban was n to invited. A few Billions with B wee headed to Ukraine but temporarily landed on a Budapest Bank, Orban held on to the money asking stupid things from Ukraine which it was not going to do for any money.. But the man was not good at anything that he did.
He was bad managing the country's economy. immigration, human rights for :LGBTQ and the general public.
Why did he give up without a fight? He already had stolen enough money and did not want to loose it. As simple as that. He had a family and had to think of those plus he already had taken enough from Hungary
Now Hungary. has a shot to be govern not stolen and Putin can go back to the North Koreans.
It also show how much pull and his Vice Pres. have in Europe=Very little Trump from the White House and his VP in Budapest was not enough but helped the opposition. These guys in DC are in a dream the have made themselves and don't see facts how they are. Trum followers, MAGA are the same way. Don't tell them is sunny at 4pm they will argue there is no sun at that hour is nighttime.
Andrew Higgins and
Reporting from Budapest
New York Times
Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, a lodestar for MAGA culture warriors and right-wing populists in Europe, conceded defeat on Sunday in a general election, breaking the momentum of a global nationalist revival promoted by President Trump.
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In a surprisingly early and gracious concession speech in Budapest, Mr. Orban congratulated the opposition saying, “The responsibility and opportunity to govern were not given to us.” But, he also made a vow: “We are not giving up. Never, never, never.”
His defeat paves the way for Peter Magyar, a former Orban loyalist and the leader of the main opposition party, to take over as Hungary’s prime minister once the newly elected Parliament meets.
“We have done it,” Mr. Magyar told a cheering crowd gathered with flags on the bank of the River Danube. “We have liberated Hungary and have taken back our country.”
Sunday’s vote was widely seen as showdown between friends and foes of liberal democracy, a cause that Mr. Orban has battled against for years to applause from his fans in the United States, Europe and Latin America. The race was closely watched by the Trump administration and the Kremlin, both of which wanted Mr. Orban to win and both of which offered support in his campaign.
The implications of the outcome extend far beyond Hungary’s borders. The next prime minister may help alter the course of the war in Ukraine, a neighbor that Mr. Orban has cast as an enemy of Hungary, and affect European security. And the results will be looked at by populists around the world who view the Hungarian leader as a model of success and of pugnacious defiance of the mainstream.
After the results, large crowds of mostly young people thronged the banks of the River Danube in front of the Parliament Building, cheering and waving Hungarian flags. Many were stunned by the speed and scale of the defeat of Mr. Orban, whose party won the four previous elections easily.
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| A firework being ignited during celebrations in Budapest on Sunday.Credit...Lisi Niesner/Reuters |
With 66 percent of votes counted, Mr. Magyar’s opposition party was on course to win 137 seats — more than a two-thirds majority. Mr. Orban’s party, Fidesz, was expected to win just 55.
Shortly before polls closed, the electoral authorities said that more than 77 percent of registered voters had cast ballots, the highest turnout in a Hungarian election since the collapse of Communism in 1989 and the start of democracy.
“Thank You Hungary!” Mr. Magyar said in a brief message on Facebook, reporting that Mr. Orban had called to congratulate him.
During his 16 years in power, Mr. Orban remade Hungary in his own image, eliminating many checks and balances by stacking the judicial system and nominally independent agencies with Fidesz loyalists, and taking control of most news media outlets. He also worked to export his model of “illiberal democracy,” promoting himself as an invincible guru for followers across Europe and elsewhere.
Sunday’s election results are likely to disappoint Mr. Trump, who sent Vice President JD Vance to Budapest, the Hungarian capital, last week to rally support for Mr. Orban in the final stretch of the campaign.
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Peter Magyar, leader of the opposition Tisza party, in Budapest following the partial results of the parliamentary election on Sunday.Credit...Marton Monus/Reuters
“I love Viktor,” said Mr. Trump, speaking by telephone from Washington to a gathering of Fidesz supporters in Budapest on Tuesday.
But Mr. Orban’s defeat will delight liberals and the European Union, which had increasingly come to view him as a disruptive menace. Before the results were known, Mr. Magyar noted that Election Day was the anniversary of a 2003 vote in favor of joining the European Union, a signal that he may move to end the Orban government’s antagonism toward the bloc.
Long a thorn in the side of E.U. officials in Brussels, Mr. Orban has consistently blocked European assistance to Ukraine, worked to water down sanctions on Russia and presented Ukraine, not Russia, as the principal threat to Europe’s security.
Those positions made him an invaluable ally for the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin. Mr. Putin, hoping to help Mr. Orban’s chances in the election, assured him last month that Hungary could rely on steady deliveries of Russian oil and gas despite disruptions to global energy supplies caused by the war in Iran.
Despite his country’s small size and population of fewer than 10 million people, Mr. Orban, 62, has played an outsize role on the world stage, inspiring and, in some cases, funding like-minded political forces abroad. He became the standard-bearer for right-wing politicians committed to “family values” and “Western civilization” against what he has denounced as degenerate, multicultural liberals.
While sharing some of Mr. Orban’s views on the importance of national sovereignty and the dangers of “woke ideology,” the opposition leader, Mr. Magyar, a lawmaker in the European Parliament and divorced father of three, won votes for Tisza by promising drastic change, though he was often vague on the specifics.
On one issue he has been unequivocal. Mr. Magyar, 45, promised voters a clean break with the endemic corruption that has enriched the prime minister’s family and friends and helped saddle Hungary with the slowest-growing economy in the region. Hungary, according to an annual ranking by Transparency International, is the most corrupt country in the European Union.
Eager to reach beyond Budapest liberals, who have loathed Mr. Orban for years, Mr. Magyar stayed far away from issues dear to progressives like L.G.B.T. rights. He campaigned mainly on his biggest asset: he is not Viktor Orban. The prospect of change, no matter in what direction, underpinned much of his support.
“I want a change, I think we deserve a change,” said Eva Kepesne Fekete, 51, who works at a McDonald’s restaurant in Budapest. On her way to a polling station, she said she was tilting toward Tisza but was worried by reports in the media about a coming war if Mr. Orban lost.
Fears of war, stoked relentlessly by television and other new media outlets controlled by Fidesz, loomed large for those who said they had voted for Mr. Orban’s party.
“Magyar would drag Hungary into war,” said a Roma woman who would give only her first name, Eniko, 67. “I have two sons, and I don’t want them to become soldiers.”
Mr. Orban grew increasingly strident during the campaign in his attacks on Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky. Mr. Magyar tried to tap into nationalist sentiment by recalling Hungary’s bitter history of bullying by Russia, which helped crush a liberal revolution in 1848 and an anti-Communist uprising in 1956.
Kremlin propaganda amplified and in some cases inspired Fidesz campaign talking points, particularly the message that Mr. Zelensky posed a serious threat to Hungary, and that a loss for Mr. Orban in the election would bring conflict and sharply higher energy prices for Hungarian households.
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| \The outcome this weekend vindicated the credibility of pollsters, most of which had given Tisza a wide lead over Fidesz and predicted a crushing defeat for the governing party. |
A crowd of people, some with open mouths and raised arms, look up in excitement. Several red, white, and green flags are held by people throughout the crowd.
Hungarians reacting to the announcement of partial election results in Budapest on Sunday.Credit...Denes Erdos/Associated Press
The election also delivered a major blow to Europe’s longest-serving government leader, and to those who look to him for inspiration and funding.
Despite pressure from the European Union, whose rules he has persistently defied, Mr. Orban has been dogged in pursuing the goal he set in 2014 of “constructing in Hungary an illiberal state, a non-liberal state.”
Since then, Hungary has slid steadily down global rankings for personal and economic liberty, corruption and press freedom, becoming the first member of the European Union to drop from “free” to “partly free” in a 2019 ranking compiled by Freedom House.
Hungary, under Fidesz, established a host of research centers and other bodies offering well-paid work to American and other foreign conservatives who say they have been discriminated against in their home countries because of their views. It also hosted an annual conference in Budapest of the U.S. Conservative Political Action Committee, a fiesta of “anti-woke” speeches by right-wing politicians and pundits from around the world.
Mr. Magyar, speaking in Budapest soon after polls closed, declared himself “cautiously optimistic,” despite what he said had been “thousands of reports” of election tampering.
“Even in the smallest township,” he said, “people have seen that this cruel, inhumane power is finished and Hungary will once again become a free country.”
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