Hungary for change: On Victor Orban’s ouster

The voter’s verdict in Hungary, that ousted Victor Orban, Hungary’s Christian-nationalist, populist and hard-right Prime Minister with a record 20 years in power (1998-2002 and 2010-2026) and four previous consecutive electoral wins, is unambiguous. According to the latest results, opposition leader Peter Magyar’s Tisza party has won about 138 seats, to Mr. Orban’s Fidesz party’s 55. The massive two-thirds majority in the Hungarian parliament is enough to help Mr. Magyar overturn many of the Orban-era shifts on education and health, judicial independence, and the controversial NER (Nemzeti Együttműködés Rendszere) or National Cooperation System that the opposition said had led to an economic downturn, widespread corruption and crony capitalism, as well as an anti-European Union stance. Mr. Magyar, who was a Fidesz party leader until just two years ago when he quit the ruling party in protest of its policies and set up his own political movement, is unlikely to reverse Mr. Orban’s anti-immigrant policies, however. Ahead of the polls, Victor Orban was endorsed by three powerful leaders, all seen as aggressors in recent conflicts — U.S. President Donald Trump, who even sent Vice-President J.D. Vance to address a public rally with Mr. Orban in Budapest last week; Russian President Vladimir Putin; and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom Mr. Orban supported unequivocally. Hungary actually quit the International Criminal Court after it issued a warrant against the Israeli Prime Minister for war crimes. It remains to be seen whether post-Orban Hungary turns its course on the wars in Iran, Ukraine or Gaza.

Most significantly for the world, that saw the rise of many populist leaders through elections in the 2010s, Hungary’s election verdict denotes that voters worldwide may be tiring of the hard-right, anti-pluralistic, anti-immigrant and xenophobic rhetoric they favoured. Similar outcomes have been seen in elections in Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, the U.K. and Poland. Such trends also provide a check to the authoritarian single-party rule that a whole range of leaders have tried to implement using illiberal policies, politically motivated cases against the opposition, the denigration of democratic institutions and a clampdown on free speech. Mr. Magyar has his work cut out if he aims to reverse these policies in Hungary. The real test of a democratic leader is not just winning elections, but in pursuing inclusive policies, representational of the entire population and providing accountability for their actions, long after forming the government.