BUDAPEST — In scenes described variously as “historic,” “euphoric,” and “genuinely confusing for anyone who had written off the Hungarian opposition,” former Orbán loyalist Péter Magyar swept to a landslide election victory on Sunday, ending Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s 16-year stranglehold on Hungarian power and triggering a nationwide shortage of celebratory pálinka.
Magyar, who burst onto the political scene just two years ago after what observers diplomatically describe as “a messy divorce from the Orbán inner circle,” won by a margin that political scientists called “decisive,” and that Orbán’s own communications team called “preliminary, pending extensive recounting.”
Orbán, who has survived every previous challenge to his authority with the ease of a man who controls the judiciary, the press, and apparently the national supply of printer cartridges for voter rolls, issued a brief statement saying he was “studying the numbers” and had “not ruled out several options.”
“This is not a defeat,” a spokesperson for Orbán’s Fidesz party told reporters. “This is a strategic retreat into temporary opposition, which we have been planning since 2010.”
Magyar’s campaign ran on a platform of anti-corruption, democratic reform, and the radical promise that Hungary should “maybe have a free press again, just to see how it goes.” Supporters flooded Budapest’s central squares in scenes not witnessed since the fall of communism, though with considerably better Instagram coverage.
In Brussels, European Union officials were described as “cautiously optimistic” — a phrase that, in EU diplomatic circles, translates roughly to “absolutely overjoyed but trained not to show it.” Several MEPs reportedly hugged in the corridors of the Parliament building, which a spokesperson confirmed “does not happen often.”
“We congratulate the Hungarian people on their democratic choice,” European Commission President said in a statement. “We also congratulate them on achieving what seventeen rounds of strongly-worded letters from us failed to do.”
Orbán’s allies across Europe — a coalition of right-wing leaders who had gathered around him like moths to a flame of democratic backsliding — responded with carefully worded statements of “respect for democratic processes,” which political analysts noted was “a sentence none of them have ever said before.”
At press time, Magyar was preparing his transition team, Orbán had been spotted browsing the leadership section at a Budapest bookshop, and the Hungarian national media — which Orbán had controlled for years — was airing its first unscripted news broadcast since 2014 and appeared to be very nervous about it.
Globe News Daily editorial note: Our Budapest correspondent celebrated with three glasses of pálinka before filing this report, which our editors have chosen to interpret as “thorough cultural immersion.”
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