Even before the vote count had ended, given the clear lead of the „Tisza Party”, Orbán acknowledged Fidesz’s electoral defeat and congratulated Péter Magyar on winning the election. Sixteen years after dismantling the constitutional order, Orbán lost his unlimited power and seemingly disproved the claim that Fidesz cannot be defeated at the ballot box. Seemingly, because it is impossible to know whether he would have handed over power so easily if the accumulated public discontent had been led by a democratic challenger who would have meant real accountability for him. This way, he can even pretend that he is a democrat.
The system survived its own collapse. What appears to be victory is, in reality, an extraction. This was not a defeat, but a transfer. Orbán’s loss was not a constraint, but a choice. He did not relinquish power because he could not hold on to it, but because in this form he gains more from it. The question is not who won, but who benefits from the outcome. The answer is clear: Orbán. If the system had been threatened by a genuine regime change, and its leaders by lawful accountability, Orbán would not have handed over power so smoothly.
Orbán had every tool at his disposal to rig the election if necessary, just as he had done before. At any moment, he could have hidden new changes in an omnibus bill that would have prevented Magyar’s victory. But Orbán conspicuously did not do so, just as it was conspicuous that he allowed Magyar – who has never renounced Fidesz’s ideology – to speak and campaign freely. He clearly aimed to keep Fidesz intact and secure a legitimate opposition position. It seemed he left it to fate to decide what this would amount to, because for him both outcomes meant victory. Even defeat.
Orbán announced with relief that „the burden of governing does not weigh on our shoulders”. After sixteen years of rule, he is handing over a looted, ruined country, financially and morally devastated, burdened with immeasurable and partly unknown levels of debt. Let whoever wants deal with it. And he can do so without fear of prison, confiscation of his wealth, or the banning of his party for the coup he carried out. If his opponent had not been Péter Magyar but a genuine democrat, Orbán could rightfully have expected to be held accountable for crimes against the state and ordinary criminal offenses.
Now, however, it appears that after creating an illiberal dictatorship, he can withdraw freely. The system does not change; it is carried forward and refurbished by a „disciple”. Orbán and his family have stolen half the country through proxies, and now they can walk away without consequence. Strikingly little has been said about Lőrinc Mészáros and others who provided Magyar with sham positions and million-forint incomes without work for years. It is likely that, under the pretext of a peaceful transition, the return of the looted assets held in their names will simply be forgotten. They will pretend that everything is legally in order, and that nothing can be done.
Péter Magyar, on the one hand, promised „accountability” and, on the other, proclaimed „reconciliation”. Accountability will apply to those whom Fidesz itself has already investigated, thus, it is expected that the disgraced György Matolcsy and his circle will be held responsible for the theft of 600 billion forints from the Hungarian National Bank. Reconciliation, however, is reserved for Orbán and those on Orbán’s list, which he will presumably hand over to Magyar. To Fidesz voters, he promised, „I will be your prime minister as well, and I will work to heal the wounds”. Clearly, this does not include holding Orbán accountable or bringing him to justice. This is not the regime change we imagined for sixteen years.
The duality of „reconciliation” and „accountability” is a political trick. These are mutually exclusive concepts; one is merely a prop. And that prop will be accountability. There is no regime change because there is no critique of the system. Magyar does not dismantle what he takes over; he prepares to operate it. Orbán does not disappear; he changes position. Everything he has remains intact. He will not be a fallen leader, but a power center in opposition. The system has not ended; it has regained strength.
This is why we do not know what the result would have been if electoral defeat had not offered Orbán an escape route to avoid accountability for the past sixteen years. As it stands, his system remains intact, because Magyar did not promise real regime change, the abolition of the Fundamental Law that underpins the dictatorship, nor a genuine rule of law, but a better-functioning, less corrupt Orbán system. This is a generational shift within Fidesz, and Orbán benefited from the fact that it is not liberal democracy, but his own system, that follows him. Magyar retroactively legitimizes the Orbán system and the overthrow of the constitutional order.
Orbán visibly does not fear being held accountable, not even as much as he did after his first government, when he was explicitly afraid of such reckoning. He has every reason not to be. Magyar needs Orbán and Fidesz as an opposition force for his own legitimacy. We do not subscribe to conspiracy theories, because we believe no secret background agreement was necessary for this, although exchanges of messages may have taken place. There will be a change of government, but not a change of system. With his victory, Magyar has gained political capital that he can abuse for a long time without losing his fanatical base.
The Orbán system was a nightmare, thanks to the ideology that Péter Magyar has never renounced. Hungarians have settled for ignoring the dangers this entails. They have so thoroughly identified the past era with Orbán himself, rather than with his system, that they were satisfied with removing Orbán, but not his system. Magyar consistently left it unclear what to expect from him, but his supporters reassured themselves that „if he does not keep his promises, they will remove him too”. This claim has no basis whatsoever.
All the more so because the Hungarian people did not remove Orbán over sixteen years, and even now it does not appear that he was driven out, but rather that he recognized in Péter Magyar a great opportunity to secure a safe escape from rising dissatisfaction and public anger, even shifting the burden of an economic collapse onto someone else. This therefore looks more like a skillful extraction than a genuine ousting. Orbán was not driven out, nor were people liberated from him, because he will remain in parliament with a large faction, in his preferred role as leader of the opposition. He can even return if he wishes.
But he does not wish to for a long time. It also appears to be part of an unspoken arrangement that Magyar has received the same two-thirds majority that Orbán had. This is what is granted in exchange for a free withdrawal. The Orbán system requires a two-thirds majority and unlimited executive power. This is inherent to its nature. With this, Magyar takes the dictator’s seat, and it will now become clear whether he uses unlimited power to build a democratic rule of law, restore the constitutional order, or to construct his own nomenklatura, replacing Orbán’s people with his own. He has already called on them to step down, but the structure remains.
If Péter Magyar uses his two-thirds majority to restore the rule of law, build institutional checks, and separate powers, as his supporters imagine in their most hopeful visions, then his critics, including Amerikai Népszava, owe him an apology, and the nation’s recognition should follow. If not, if he realizes the worst fears step by step, brick by brick then those were right who, even more than the Tisza neophytes (and for much longer), wanted Orbán’s downfall, but saw in Magyar not the chance for regime change, but for the preservation of the system.
Péter Magyar has created a euphoric atmosphere; the honeymoon may begin. But the leading Western press has already pointed out that Magyar himself offers no guarantee that Orbán’s fall will lead to the restoration of democratic rule of law in Hungary. Evidence of this can be seen in his conduct in the European Parliament, where his tightly controlled representatives voted in line with Orbán on the most important issues. The time may come when it will be painfully missed that Magyar was given unconditional, unlimited authorization for everything, and that he cannot be held accountable for anything.
The democratic segment of Tisza voters failed to organize itself and failed to make any agreement with Magyar in exchange for its support. Since Magyar deliberately admitted no one into his party, and the Tisza circles remain social organizations outside it, there is no institutional mechanism to hold the government accountable for how it uses its unlimited two-thirds power. For a while, they will support all his decisions, as they have so far, but eventually it may become apparent that this was not what was promised, it is simply Fidesz again. Especially if Magyar moves from the relatively moderate Fidesz of 1998 to the Fidesz of 2026 in a short time.
The joy is justified in that Orbán is no longer prime minister. But regarding the future, there are more questions than answers. Magyar’s voters are not concerned with these questions for now, or they offer illusory answers. With the change of personnel, however, nothing has been resolved; the construction of the NER can begin again from the start, and Magyar’s leverage over his supporters has not diminished. Now everything will have to be excused, everything explained, and lie after lie told, „so that Orbán does not return”. Because no one else can „return”. Péter Magyar has eliminated the world beyond Fidesz, the pluralism.
The situation in Hungary should be understood as if the U.S. Congress consisted of only two Republican parties: one MAGA, and the other a reform MAGA, elected by former Democratic voters who concluded that Trump can only be defeated by another Republican. They are complemented by a third party, the Ku Klux Klan, represented in this case by a Hungarian Nazi party called Mi Hazánk. The international community is celebrating, believing that Orbán has been defeated. But instead of one Fidesz, there are now two, and the democratic and liberal left has completely disappeared from parliament. This is a worse situation than before.
The world’s jubilant democrats do not realize that in the person of Péter Magyar they are celebrating someone who did not stand up against restrictions on freedom of assembly, did not take part in the well-known Budapest Pride, and even encouraged his followers to stay away. Someone who, like Orbán, votes against Ukraine and in favor of Russia on every occasion in the European Union, whose views are closer to Orbán’s than to those of the European Union. Someone whose party has only 29 members because he does not allow anyone else to join, because he tolerates not even that level of control. And someone who has already threatened the press the moment it dared to ask him a question he did not like. There will be more surprises.
There is reason to fear that Magyar’s left-liberal supporters will be at the forefront of preventing any democratic alternative from emerging, because according to their current narrative, such an alternative would divide the forces opposing Orbán. A far-right parliament has been created, including Mi Hazánk, and Orbán’s greatest dream – the System of National Cooperation, the „central power field” – has been realized. A world may emerge where the official ideology is anti-liberal, and so is its opposition. Democratic norms become terms of abuse. There is a real danger that Magyar will not become a democrat, but that his voters will become new Fidesz supporters.
We do not want to take away anyone’s joy. We hate Fidesz and Orbán too – we hated them before many Magyar supporters did, perhaps even more than Péter Magyar himself. But nothing has been resolved. Anything can come of this, including the preservation and extension of the Orbán system. Because we want what is best for the country, we hope that the hopes of Magyar’s voters will come true, even if we do not believe in it. We have seen such a two-thirds power operate once before, supported just as enthusiastically by those who are now granting Magyar unlimited power.
We suggest that everyone remain vigilant. Read the signs. One of the greatest tests will be whether Magyar restores Gábor Iványi’s church to its original status, whether the Hungarian state pays its multi-billion-forint debt, and whether court rulings are enforced. Will the persecution end? Will the false charge of violence against authorities against Gábor Iványi be dropped, along with the show trial? If he wants democracy and reconciliation, let him start there. Reconciliation is not only for Fidesz supporters. The real wounds are not theirs.
