Peter Magyar, the former Orban ally vying for power in Hungary

21 minutes ago

"Now or never," Peter Magyar has been telling Hungarians, in a breathless campaign across the country in the run-up to 12 April elections that opinion polls suggest he can win.

This 45-year-old former Fidesz party insider represents the biggest threat to Viktor Orban's rule in Hungary since he won the first of four consecutive victories in 2010.

Magyar's slogan dates back to a revolutionary poet's 19th Century rallying cry to rise up for the homeland.

After more than 100 campaign stops his message has been shortened to "Now": the words "or never" have been crossed out, adding to the urgency.

He is on course to visit all of Hungary's 106 constituencies, and he has given four, five, even six speeches a day. Magyar has built a powerful support base in more than two years of touring the country, even in the small towns and villages were Fidesz traditionally dominates.

Last year he walked 300km (185 miles) from Budapest to the Romanian border in a campaign to "reunite" the nation, in a bid to bring natural Fidesz voters to his side.

Magyar promises to tackle corruption, improve the economy and he has sought to woo Hungary's disadvantaged Roma community. He has also promised to unlock billions of euros in EU funds, frozen largely because of concerns over Hungary's rule of law.

But Orban has depicted him as a "puppet" of the EU and Ukraine, and he has been wary of getting too close to Brussels and has promised voters "we are the real party of peace".

His self-confidence stems from a deep understanding of the rival he faces.

Until February 2024, Magyar was very much part of the Fidesz family.

He joined the party at university and married one of its rising stars in Judit Varga, with whom he had three children.

Then Magyar stunned Hungarians with a live appearance on a pro-opposition YouTube Channel called Partizán.

In a country of 9.6 million people, a million watched as a solemn Peter Magyar explained why he had had enough of his own party.

"Everyone warned me against it, friends, family people I know," he told presenter Márton Gulyás. "Obviously I've been in this system, in this circle, for a very long time."

Hungary was in the midst of a scandal in which President Katalin Novak had granted a pardon to a man who had helped cover up sexual abuse in a Hungarian state-run children's home.

She resigned, and so did Magyar's ex-wife. Varga had been justice minister and had co-signed the pardon. Two leading Fidesz women were left to carry the can. Varga had been destined for big things in Fidesz, having left her job as minister to spearhead Fidesz European election campaign. That career was over.

Now she was no longer part of the Fidesz machine, Peter Magyar sensed this was his moment.

"I do not want to be part of a system in which the real people in charge hide behind women's skirts," he wrote on Facebook.

Towards the end of his Partizán interview Magyar spoke of his hope for political change, while realising it would be very difficult while Orban was still in power.

The current opposition was totally inept, he complained, so change would have to come from within. But one day there would be change and when it did happen it could be fast, he predicted.

His YouTube appearance went viral.

"It was not a planned move," he later told the BBC. "My mother called me not to go, but I did the opposite. Everybody knew the situation in Hungary - it's not very safe to go against this government."

Peter Magyar's high-profile party marriage had fallen apart in 2023 but he was still an important figure in Fidesz even if he was little known to the wider public.

He was a natural fit for Orban's social conservatives.

The son of two lawyers - his mother was as senior judge - Peter Magyar also counts a former Hungarian president as his godfather, and he was very interested in politics from an early age.

Magyar went to an elite Catholic boys' high school near the centre of Budapest before studying law at a Catholic university in Budapest while Orban was serving his first term as prime minister from 1998-2002.

Magyar joined the party after Orban's election defeat, and the woman he married, Judit Varga, was destined for Fidesz success, becoming justice minister in 2019, nine years after Orban's return to office.

Magyar himself became a diplomat at Hungary's permanent mission in Brussels, later running Orban's team working with the European Parliament. He went on to serve on the boards of state-owned companies.

His disaffection with the party was gradual.

"After a while I became more and more critical, openly and just among friends. I can tell you that the Fidesz we see today is very very different from the one I joined in 2002."

"I was always told by the politicians it's necessary to keep power - I accepted it for a time. But of course the turning point was in 2024," he told the BBC's Budapest correspondent Nick Thorpe.

For a while, Magyar worried if he had made a mistake: "I have three kids, I love them very much and I was very much worried about their future as well."

If the YouTube interview was the turning point, the next big moment came on 15 March 2024, a national holiday marking the anniversary of Hungary's failed revolution in 1848.

While Orban spoke from the steps of Budapest's National Museum, condemning the EU and calling for the "occupation of Brussels", Peter Magyar was addressing an estimated 10,000 people, alleging corruption and mishandling the economy at the top.

He announced he was forming a new party, with only weeks to go before Hungarians voted in European elections.

He doubled down on his accusations of corruption, releasing a secret recording made of a conversation with his ex-wife in 2023 in which she speaks about a high-profile trial.

Judit Varga said she was appalled by Magyar's actions, accusing him of abuse which he denied. He also fell out with a former friend, Orban minister Gergely Gulyás - who said Magyar was "one who first betrays his family, then betrays his country as an agent of Brussels".

Asked what he thought of his challenger, Orban told the BBC: "He left Fidesz, that's all."

By now Varga's ex-husband was making big strides politically and forming new friendships, among them popular actor Ervin Nagy.

Magyar took over a dormant party called Tisza, and won 29.6% of the vote and seven seats in the European Parliament. Tisza was well behind Orban's ruling Fidesz on 44.8%, but Magyar had made a powerful statement.

By autumn 2024, Magyar's new party was ahead of Fidesz in the polls and he tore into Orban's close ties with Russia as they led rival marches marking Hungary's 1956 uprising against the Soviet Union.

While Orban labelled Tisza as "warmongers" indulging in a "Brussels war march", Magyar taunted the prime minster as the man who had in 1989 called for Russian troops to leave Hungary but now trampled on the legacy of 1956 and was "the most loyal ally of the Kremlin".

"Mr Prime Minister, why won't you say 'Russians go home' any more?" he asked.

Magyar is no liberal. He has openly derided the liberal opposition that tried to take Orban on in the past, only to see the Fidesz leader storm to a two-thirds majority it needed to mould the constitution.

One key to his success has been his demolition of the fragmented, old opposition parties. He sees former Socialist leader Ferenc Gyurcsany as no better than Orban.

And he has not been afraid to take on the pro-Orban new outlets that dominate Hungary's media landscape.

Journalists had been sent a black-and-white surveillance image apparently showing drugs on a table near a bed. The implication was that more footage was to come and Magyar moved to pre-empt it.

He admitted having consensual sex with an ex-girlfriend but was adamant he had not touched anything on the table and said he had been lured into a "honey-trap" set up by the secret services.

"My conscience is clear," he said, adding later that he had taken a drug test on 22 March to prove he had not consumed any drugs during the past months, and pointing out he had had similar negative tests in the past.

Until now, none of the accusations and barbs directed at Peter Magyar have stuck. As a former Fidesz adviser, he believes this gives him an advantage.

"I know them, I know their tricks. I know they're very much frightened," he said.

"This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, not for Peter Magyar but for the country."