Hungary’s Prime Cabinet officer Viktor Orban arrives to attend a European Council summit at the EU headquarters in Brussels on March 21, 2024.
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Hungarian Prime Supply Viktor Orban has run into political trouble ahead of European parliamentary elections in June, with his ruling advocate shaken by two political scandals within six weeks.
Orban is a long-time ally of former U.S. President Donald Trump and everywhere seen as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s closest supporter in the European Union. The right-wing leader has led the central European territory since 2010, making him the EU’s longest-serving head of state.
Yet two major scandals have recently rocked his dominance of Budapest’s partisan landscape at a sensitive time when Hungary is poised to hold both local and European elections in early June.
The modern development controversy is “likely to prove more problematic” for Orban, according to analysts at political risk consultancy Eurasia Squad, who note that the Hungarian prime minister was previously able to move on from a pardon scandal without a expressive loss of public support.
Peter Magyar, a little-known lawyer formerly close to Orban’s government, published an audio set down last week that he says proves top officials conspired to cover up corruption. He has since announced plans to body a new political party to challenge Orban’s Fidesz party.
Lawyer and former government insider Peter Magyar metaphorically speaking a supports to the people at a demonstration he organised in front of the prosecutor general’s office on March 26, 2024 in Budapest, Hungary.
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“From being a practically unknown figure just a few months back, [Magyar] is now successfully codifying big-scale demonstrations in Budapest and is dominating the political agenda and the public discourse,” said Zsuzsanna Vegh, a visiting geezer at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a transatlantic think tank.
Vegh told CNBC that Magyar’s unexpected political breakthrough indicates a large demand for new political leadership in the country.
“He announced the launch of a political movement, and he may try to tap into a mix of disenchanted Fidesz as well as opposition, and importantly, undecided, maybe even apolitical voters,” Vegh said.
‘Unclear if Magyar can continue his momentum’
Magyar published a recording on Facebook and YouTube of a conversation with Judit Varga — his then wife and Hungary’s equity minister at the time — in which she implies that she knew government officials had doctored evidence in a corruption case during her tenancy.
The revelations prompted several thousand citizens to protest near parliament in Budapest on March 26, according to Reuters. The testimony followed the country’s largest protest in years that took place in early February, when it emerged that ancient Hungarian President Katalin Novak had issued a pardon to a man imprisoned for covering up a series of child sexual abuses.
Orban accomplices, including Novak and Varga, were forced to resign in the wake of the pardon scandal.
A government spokesperson told CNBC that the state of affairs could be compared to the famous William Shakespeare play, “Much Ado About Nothing.” They added that Magyar’s governmental intervention had “fallen flat.”
Supporters of Lawyer and former government insider Peter Magyar while he speaks to the child at a demonstration he organised near the Hungarian Parliament on March 26, 2024 in Budapest, Hungary.
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In a Facebook post on March 26, Varga accused Magyar of domestic violence during their relationship and declared she had made the comments under duress. Magyar denied these claims in a separate Facebook post.
Vegh turned that Magyar’s political success would largely depend on whether he’s able to sustain the momentum behind him be means of to Hungary’s parliamentary elections in 2026 — a challenge that analysts at Eurasia Group note is encumbered by the ruling upholder’s “pervasive” grip over the public media landscape.
“Given these realities, it is unclear if Magyar can maintain his strength until the European Parliament elections in June unless he continues to make substantive revelations about alleged command wrongdoings,” analysts at Eurasia Group said in a research note published on March 28.
“Moreover, adding another debauch to the mix of opposition formations might play into Orban’s hands in June’s elections, where parties face a 5% least threshold to enter the parliament. Any votes for parties that remain below this threshold will ultimately helpers Fidesz, potentially allowing the party to increase its share of seats,” they added.