Hungary: A challenger emerges from Orban’s own party
Hungary’s strongman leader Viktor Orban suddenly faces a serious threat to his power, said Suzanne Lynch in Politico.eu (Belgium). Peter Magyar, the photogenic ex-husband of Orban’s protégé Judit Varga, has burst onto the political scene in recent weeks, saying he wants to create a new, centrist opposition party. It’s “a rare moment of dissent against Orban’s iron grip,” in a country where he controls the media, the judiciary, and the elections. Magyar began denouncing Orban’s populist Fidesz party in February, saying Hungary was being run by a “mafia” on behalf of oligarchs. His first rally, in Budapest last month, drew 40,000 people; his next, just last weekend, drew at least twice that many. Magyar, 43, is a onetime “Fidesz apparatchik” himself, but he stepped back to take care of the kids as his wife’s political star rose and she became justice minister. Now he’s turned on her—and on the party. Before the couple divorced last year, Magyar recorded Varga apparently implicating “members of Orban’s inner circle” in a corruption cover-up, and two weeks ago he gave that tape to prosecutors.
The recording was a bombshell, said Peter Magyari in Valasz Online (Hungary). In it, Varga tells her then-husband that Orban’s powerful cabinet chief tampered with files from prosecutors’ investigation of a 2021 bribery scandal and that she, as justice minister, knew about it. “Aiding and abetting and abuse of office: These are serious crimes.” And this scandal comes on the heels of another one that badly damaged
Orban’s government. Varga and Hungarian President Katalin Novak were both forced to resign in February over the disgraceful pardon of a man who had covered up sex abuse at a children’s home. The “regime media” is trying to strike back, said Paul Lendvai in Der Standard (Austria). Varga gave a tearful TV interview last week alleging that Magyar, far from being the model stay-at-home dad, had actually been abusing her for 16 years and had “terrorized” her into saying what he wanted to hear on the tape. State television has been playing up that allegation, relentlessly smearing Magyar as a “revengethirsty blackmailer,” but so far to “little political effect.” Instead, Magyar’s YouTube account is getting millions of views.
Yet it’s doubtful that a relative unknown can inflict much damage on an entrenched authoritarian regime like Orban’s, said Marton Gergely in Hvg360 (Hungary). “How does Magyar intend to restore the rule of law?” After all, he sat around with that recording of his wife for 15 months before he was moved to blow the whistle. Evidently, he had “no problem with the mafia state before his divorce.” The opposition has been duped again, said Benedict Abbot in Magyar Nemzet (Hungary). The Left is “a collection of frantic fools and talentless idiots” with no leader, so whenever a disillusioned right-winger comes along, the opposition “kneels before him in worship.” It never works. Magyar is a “parasite” who fed off his ex-wife’s access to power. He’s no “miracle weapon” against Orban.