In Demokrata, Gábor Bencsik finds it strange of Hungary’s left-liberal intellectuals to expect their Messiah to come from the Right and bring allegedly disillusioned Fidesz supporters with him.

After Momentum founder András Fekete-Győr and former opposition frontrunner Péter Márki-Zay, Péter Magyar is the third consecutive would-be saviour of that ilk, he remarks. Bencsik concludes, however, that ‘it is not sufficient to come from the Right, you also have to be talented to be successful’.

In Mandiner, Dániel Kacsoh quotes a recent public opinion poll which suggests that the 16% of respondents who say they would support Magyar’s new party are overwhelmingly former left-wing party supporters.

Only 2% voted Fidesz in the past. He predicts that the domestic harassment scandal around him will put an early end to Magyar’s political career. Kacsoh would rejoice if that happened, for the sake of Magyar’s three children – and the public at large. 

In one of three editorials, Magyar Narancs interprets the police report on a conflict between Magyar and his wife more than three years ago as a typical example of the ’Empire striking back’.

Such an attempt at character assassination, the editors write, exemplifies the current state of the country – what happens to you if you manage to gather tens of thousands of people to protest against government policies. The harassment accusation, the editors suggest is ‘a relatively mild symptom of what Hungary has become’.

In Heti Világgazdaság, Réka Kinga Papp suggests that Péter Magyar has limited charisma and few revolutionary ideas. She attributes the enthusiasm of the opposition-leaning press about him to two parallel ‘mistakes’.

The first is the idea that the opposition must target the supporters of the opposing side, although such a policy can only result in emptying their own message.

The second is the mania of waiting for a Messiah, which she believes is a reflection of Prime Minister Orbán’s uncontested authority in his own camp. Instead, she suggests, the opposition should confront the country’s burning problems.

Magyar Hang’s Szabolcs Szerető, on the other hand, hopes that Péter Magyar’s initiative will not peter out after a few weeks. He finds it mistaken to dismiss his supporters as naïve folk waiting for a Messiah.

Instead, he believes there is a huge demand for a new opposition force and Péter Magyar may ’provide the supply side’. From now on, however, he cannot remain a one-man show if he wants to survive. He should find allies to set up a movement behind his future party – and rather sooner than later, Szerető concludes.

Péter Magyar Releases Recordings Alleging Corruption

A pro-government pundit condemns Magyar for secretly recording and now publicly releasing a conversation with his wife, who was at that time (January 2023) Minister of Justice. A left-wing columnist takes the audio as proof that the government is not worthy of public trust.

Péter Magyar, the divorced husband of former Justice Minister Judit Varga, released an audio recording on Tuesday in which Ms Varga says leading government officials asked prosecutors to remove references to them from the files of a corruption scandal in which Ms Varga’s former deputy faces up to 8 years in prison.

 Mr Magyar then addressed a crowd of several thousand people who demanded the resignation of the Prosecutor General. The prosecutor’s office assured the public that it is physically impossible to remove documents from its files. Ms Varga called her former husband a narcissistic psychopath who terrorised her while their lived under the same roof.

In Magyar Nemzet, Gergely Huth condemns Péter Magyar for recording and releasing a private conversation with his wife. He adds that the ongoing trial where the former number 2 in the Justice Ministry stands accused of corruption is proof of the independence of Hungary’s prosecutors and, by implication, of the rule of law.

Huth finds it telling that Magyar has chosen former Socialist Justice Minister Péter Bárándy to accompany him as his lawyer to the prosecutor’s office where he accused high-ranking government officials, including Cabinet Minister Antal Rogán of corruption.

In Népszava, Miklós Hargitai writes that accusations of domestic harassment brought against Mr Magyar, whether true or not, do not invalidate his claims of government corruption. He believes that the recording released by Péter Magyar and submitted to the prosecutor’s office proves the great extent to which prosecutors are influenced by the government.

Most Hungarians already think that the government fails to strictly abide by the law, Hargitai writes, and the audio released by Mr Magyar proves to him that it is ‘no longer worthy of public trust’.

Péter Magyar Mainly Draws Supporters from Opposition Parties – For the Moment

Commentators disagree on Magyar’s chances of luring Fidesz voters to his camp.

Mandiner’s Dániel Kacsoh ridicules Péter Magyar’s claim that he has personally spoken to thousands of disenchanted Fidesz faithful. Kacsoh claims that Fidesz followers react with anger to Magyar’s new role as the main critic of the government and consider him a traitor. He is simply dividing the opposition cake into more slices, Kacsoh suggests.

On Telex, Tamás Fábián acknowledges that core Fidesz supporters ‘cannot be easily moved’. However, he quotes opinion polls showing that hundreds of thousands of fringe Fidesz voters have turned their backs on Fidesz as a result of the paedophile pardon scandal. Nevertheless, Fábián thinks if Magyar wants to be a serious challenge to PM Orbán, his movement must first become the strongest opposition force.

Péter Magyar Mbilized Another Massive Rally

Opinions diverge on both the size of the crowd cheering the new opposition star on Saturday and his chances to bring about a regime change.

In Magyar Nemzet, László Szentesi Zöldi dismisses Magyar’s claim that his rally was attended by hundreds of thousands of people as pure fantasy. He claims the crowd didn’t even fully fill the square in front of the Parliament building, nor the adjacent streets, unlike past pro-government ‘peace marches’. He puts the number of people attending Saturday’s rally at 50 thousand and suggests that supporters of the government gather to show what a crowd of several hundred thousand really looks like.

On 24.hu, Zsolt Kerner puts the number of participants at about 100 thousand, adding that according to international studies, protest marches should mobilize at least 3.5 percent of the population to produce a political shock (that is three and a half times the size of the crowd last Saturday). He also remarks Magyar has drawn more and more people to his three consecutive rallies so far, and in order to attract at least as many as on last Saturday to the next one on 6 May, he will have to name the new party he will lead at the European elections in June (Magyar told the crowd on Saturday that he would do so ‘in due course’).

Péter Magyar Still in Focus

Weeklies attach more importance to Peter Magyar’s appearance on the political scene than during the first two weeks of his sudden surge as the most popular critic of the government.

In Magyar Hang, veteran political analyst László Kéri describes the ’Magyar phenomenon’ as only seemingly a one-man show. In reality, he suggests, he represents ’a third Hungary’ entering the political arena – people who do not owe allegiance to either the forces of the opposition or of the government. Magyar, he believes, stands for a traditional Christian middle-class which has grown disappointed with Fidesz.

Jelen’s Zoltán Lakner, believes, by way of contrast, that Magyar represents Hungarians who have become dissatisfied with the opposition. He thinks the losers from his appearance may include the Twin-Tailed Dog party and Momentum, both of whom started out as critics both of the government and of the existing opposition. As a result, he continues, the Democratic Coalition may get rid of its critics within the opposition but will have to face a new force which is even less inclined to cooperate with it.

In Élet és Irodalom, János Széky suggests that Magyar is making both the government and the opposition extremely nervous. The government side, he remarks, splashed out in a single day on a single cluster of Facebook advertisements the equivalent of 80 months of Élet és Irodalom’s advertising revenue, just to discredit Peter Magyar. Equally interesting, he continues, the Democratic Coalition, as the strongest opposition party, also appears infuriated by Magyar and his growing popularity.

In its first page editorial, Magyar Narancs lambasts the prosecution for failing to investigate the remark by former Justice Minister Judit Varga that leading government officials had their names removed from the indictment in the corruption scandal in which Ms Varga’s deputy is one of the chief defendants. That statement was secretly recorded by Magyar and submitted to the prosecutors in March.

The editors dismiss the claim of the prosecutor’s office according to which no documents can be removed from their files. Magyar Narancs writes that the prosecutors always eliminate most of the material they receive from the police, either because it appears irrelevant to the investigation, or for other reasons.

In his Demokrata editorial, András Bencsik launches a conspiracy theory: was Peter Magyar’s appearance in politics really as spontaneous as it appears, or might he be a ‘carefully trained agent’ who secretly gathered information for a long time to release it when it hurts the most?

Bencsik recalls that US ambassador David Pressman recently said that America finds it difficult to come to terms with the Hungarian government and could in due course respond with actions rather than words. Bencsik asks whether Magyar’s brand-new movement might be part of such an ‘action’ or whether it is happening by mere coincidence.

Péter Magyar’s new party registered to run for seats in the European Parliament

A left-wing commentator thinks that Péter Magyar may score a significant moral victory over the government if his new TISZA party makes it to the European Parliament and joins the European People’s Party.

The National Electoral Committee added Péter Magyar’s TISZA party to the list of contenders for seats in the European Parliament on Thursday. Magyar took over this ‘dormant’ party rather than founding a new one because to run for the European Elections in June, parties had to be incorporated by the day the date of the vote was announced.

In Népszava, Tamás Rónay rejects opposition opinions that Magyar’s views on the EU are copied from Fidesz’s playbook. He certainly spoke against the idea of a European superstate, Rónay concedes, but argued for putting an end to ceaseless clashes with Brussels and joining the European Prosecutor’s Office. If Magyar’s intention to join the EPP materialises, Rónay adds, it would be a ‘huge blow’ to Prime Minister Orbán who had to leave the strongest European party family three years ago.

Weeklies on growing interest in Péter Magyar

As the new opposition star is apparently drawing more and  more followers, praise and criticism are also becoming stronger and more frequent.

In Magyar Hang, Szabolcs Szerető finds that Péter Magyar has already brought about a change in Hungarian political life, and the only question remaining is how far that change will go. Magyar’s new party may well profit from the country’s increasing financial and economic difficulties as well as its growing international isolation, he suggests. However, Szerető adds, politics is not a one-man show and even a small group of people cannot change its course. Real change would require the mobilisation of masses of Hungarians, otherwise Péter Magyar might well end up as one more fallen Hungarian hero.

In Élet és Irodalom, former diplomat György Odze takes up Magyar’s defence against fellow liberals who reject him because he is very much unlike them. He is not ’our’ man, he writes, adding however that is not ’their’ man either. Odze calls on the liberal opposition to stand up for Magyar, because of the goal of defeating Prime Minister Orbán unites them and also because he is the target of ’crude’ pro-government propaganda campaign.

In Jelen, Zoltán Lakner expects the European Parliamentary elections in June to yield Fidesz perhaps its worst electoral result in 14 years. At any rate, he believes, none of the participants will get what they’re after. The Democratic Coalition may well see its dominance within the opposition camp evaporate, while Magyar’s supporters will have to face up to the fact that the old opposition they want to replace will not vanish. These two sides of the opposition will then be faced with the strategic question of how to combine their efforts to defeat each other, with their shared goal of defeating Fidesz.

In a similar vein in Heti Világgazdaság, Árpád W. Tóta warns Magyar that he is not the only anti-government player in the field. He finds it impossible to erase the Democratic Coalition, as the DK as well as its allies, the MSZP and Párbeszéd are well entrenched with a clear political identity – tas the Hungarian Left. At the end of the day, he concludes, Magyar will have to choose between his two foes – namely, he will have to opt for the least worst one.

On the pro-government side, Tamás Pindroch suggests in Mandiner that Magyar is just one of a series of left-wing messiahs doomed to failure. Left-wing opinion makers enthusiastically welcomed Ferenc Gyurcsány, then Gordon Bajnai, followed by the founders of Momentum, Péter Márki-Zay and even former Jobbik leader Vona, he recalls, adding that he doesn’t see why Magyar’s fate should be different from theirs. Politics is a long-distance race, he writes, and Magyar has been mistakenly behaving like a sprinter, which means his efforts will peter out fairly soon.

In Demokrata, political analyst Ágoston Sámuel Mráz attributes Magyar’s sudden popularity to long-brewing dissatisfaction within the left-wing electorate. On the other hand, he expects the pro-government camp to mobilise to face the challenge. Fringe supporters, he explains, tend to remain passive when the political mood is lukewarm, because they don’t feel that their votes are really needed. Now however, as Viktor Orbán is under attack, he predicts that Fidesz voters who have wavered over the past few months will become politically more active and stand-up in support of their party.

MTI Photo: Szilárd Koszticsák

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