Péter Magyar, the new sensation in Hungarian politics who threatens Viktor Orbán’s dominance

It all started in February when Magyar gained national attention after openly breaking with Fidesz, the party led by Orbán. After a presidential pardon for the accomplice of a pedophile was made public, Magyar, who was part of the most elite circle of Fidesz, decided to go to the prosecutor’s office with accusations of corruption and made public a recording in which Judit Vargahis ex-wife and the one who was the Minister of Justice at that time, spoke about the corruption at the highest levels of government.

“This shows that the judicial system is under political influence, that key figures manipulated the investigations and that Varga knew it,” said opposition politician Katalin Cseh, a Hungarian member of the European Parliament, after the tape was released. “It is very clear proof that the Hungarian judicial system is neither free nor independent. “It is also one of the first cases in which someone from Orbán’s inner circle has spoken out.”

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Since then, Magyar has become the star topic of political conversations in the country. Only six weeks after the revelation, the lawyer had already given interviews to several of the world’s most important media outlets and had gathered tens of thousands of people —some figures even point to 200,000 people— in a anti-government rally in Budapest on March 15, Hungary’s national holiday.

That day, before a crowd, he accused Fidesz of spend billions of euros annually on propaganda and announced a change of trend in Hungarian politics. “From now on, nothing will be like before. The change has begun, which cannot be stopped,” she declared. “We Hungarians are uniting,” she told the crowd, calling on Hungarians from the right, left and liberals to work together to replace the current political elite.

Magyar initially announced that he had no plans to enter politics again. However, in April, he made a surprise announcement that he would present in the 2024 European elections by TISZA (the Respect and Freedom Party). The centrist party had been founded in 2021 and until then had been a relatively minor player in Hungarian politics. However, with the arrival of Magyar, the number of votes could experience a notable increase. As recently published EuroNewstraining could achieve between 17 and 25% of the votes on June 9.

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His sudden emergence on the front line of Hungarian politics has not only shaken the party in power, but also the opposition. Some Opposition politicians and supporters have shown skepticism about Magyar and his strategy, as well as his fear that it could dilute the already divided opposition vote. Magyar, on the other hand, assures that it is not a “problem” that he created and criticizes the opposition for not having overthrown the government after 14 years.

An abuser or an evil campaign?

Magyar’s rise has not been without controversy. A month after the recording was published, Varga decided to resign as Minister of Justice and issued a statement stating that she was “horrified” by the publication of the tape and accused her ex-husbandwith whom she shares custody of her three children, blackmail and “verbal and physical violence”.

Specifically, Varga narrates an episode in which Magyar returned home completely drunk, entered the bedroom completely “crazed” and began to reproach her for having embarrassed him in front of his friends because he was not able to reach her by phone. “Between shouts and scoldings, he lowered them one by one. books that I had on the bed and he threw them behind my back. […] “Then he took off his pants and threw them at me with his belt,” he explained. It was then, she claimed, that she decided she would ask him for a divorce.

Magyar has categorically denied the accusations and has stated that they are part of a “propaganda campaign” by Fidesz. In fact, the candidate for the European elections claims to have tried to convince Varga to accompany him to the prosecutor’s office, although she refused. According to him, the government’s goal is to present him as a vengeful and abusive ex-husband who had published her tape to discredit her.

Now, three months after the scandal broke out, it remains to be seen how this accusation affects him and what real impact its emergence will have on the results of the European and municipal elections that are held simultaneously on June 9. In any case, many analysts predict that the European elections are only one stage of the process, since the Magyar’s true goal lies in the upcoming parliamentary elections in April 2026.