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On Sunday 5 May, in Hungary, around 10 thousand people gathered in Debrecen, the second main city in the country, to support Péter Magyar who for some months has been at the head of a movement that has become the largest opposition force to the semi-authoritarian government and of far-right Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán: Magyar called Sunday’s political demonstration the largest in Hungary’s recent history.
Péter Magyar is 43 years old, a lawyer and has recently founded a new party, TISZA (Tisztelet és Szabadság, Respect and Freedom), which will present 12 candidates in the European elections and four candidates in the Budapest local elections which will be held in June. Magyar claims to be a centrist, inspired by French President Emmanuel Macron, and polls give TISZA at 25 percent, making it the most important opposition movement to Orbán’s party, Fidesz, which is at around 45 percent.
Debrecen, May 5, 2024 (AP Photo/Denes Erdos)
Until recently Péter Magyar was practically unknown in Hungary, although he was a member of the Fidesz leadership, and although his ex-wife, Judit Varga, was a minister and parliamentarian and he sat on the boards of directors of some state companies. Last February, Varga and the President of the Hungarian Republic Katalin Novak ended up at the center of a major scandal that erupted when it was discovered that Novak had granted pardon to a man who had been convicted as an accomplice in a case of sexual abuse of minors. Novak resigned and shortly after so did Varga, who when she was Minister of Justice had signed the pardon granted by the president.
Immediately after this news, Magyar publicly announced that he had resigned from the boards of directors of public companies, that he had left Fidesz and that his new goal was to oppose Orbán’s government. Above all, he had begun to present himself as a whistleblower, that is, a person who reports fraudulent or illicit activities within a body or organization of which he or she was a member. Among other things, he had made public a recording dating back to 2023 of Varga, from which he has since separated: in the audio file, Varga seems to suggest that some important members of Orbán’s government had certain evidence removed from some judicial documents to hide their involvement in a corruption ring. The recording, according to Magyar, proved that Orbán’s regime was deeply corrupt, and that only a person like him, who had been part of it and then left it, could manage to beat it.
Péter Magyar, Debrecen, May 5, 2024 (AP Photo/Denes Erdos)
Magyar’s message had immediately attracted the attention of a significant part of the electorate and he had begun to organize large protest demonstrations against the government, such as the one on Sunday in which he denounced the “mafia” that dominates power in Hungary and the management of the country as if it were “a family business”: “Today the vast majority of the Hungarian people are tired of the elite in power, of hatred, of apathy, of propaganda and of divisions”, said Magyar in front of the crowd gathered in Debrecen, considered a stronghold of Fidesz and Orbán «Hungarians today want cooperation, love, unity and peace».
Péter Magyar takes a selfie with some supporters, Budapest, April 26, 2024 (AP Photo/Denes Erdos)
