Emerging Hungarian opposition leader attracts tens of thousands
Pounding the campaign trail ahead of European elections, emerging Hungarian opposition leader Peter Magyar drew tens of thousands on Sunday in a stronghold of nationalist leader Viktor Orban.
Speaking just before him was well-known screen actor Ervin Nagy, whose support Magyar has managed to grab to lend celebrity power to his campaign as his own star rises.
Magyar shot to prominence in February on the back of a scandal that hit Orban, posing the most serious challenge in his 14 years in power.
In Magyar's latest rally in Hungary's second biggest city, Debrecen, tens of thousands of people cheered on the former government insider who is now one of its fiercest critics.
"Change can be stopped for a few days, a few weeks, but no one in history has ever stopped it and neither can they," Magyar told the crowd.
Accusing the government of populism, cronyism and corruption, Magyar's campaign is raising hopes for a "system change", said actor Nagy, known from Hungarian films such as the historical horse-racing adventure "Bet on Revenge" and Oscar-nominated drama "On Body and Soul".
"Time has come for change... We have simply had enough," Krisztian Kovacs, a 29-year-old accountant, told AFP at the Debrecen rally.
Magyar, 43 and a self-declared conservative, since last month leads a political group, which aims to be "neither right nor left" to challenge Orban.
The campaign is growing so fast, Nagy had to lend the politician his pick-up truck to stand on for a speech at one spontaneous rally.
"We didn't have time to get a stage," said Nagy, 47.
"There's a revolutionary mood, like in 1956," he said -- a reference to the historic uprising against Hungary's Soviet-backed communist rulers.
'Dictatorship-lite'
Magyar seized the initiative in February when an ally of Orban, Katalin Novak, resigned as president after it was revealed she had pardoned a convicted accomplice of a child abuser.
Magyar's TISZA (Respect and Freedom) party has already eclipsed the rest of the opposition heading into the European elections on June 9.
A recent survey by pollster Median showed the party had 25 percent support.
Nagy says he had not been involved in politics before -- but Magyar only took an hour to convince him to join the campaign.
He believes the EU member country under Orban has been turned into a "kind of dictatorship-lite".
Since returning to power in 2010, Orban, 60, has changed laws to restrict independent media, civil society, arts and culture.
"If someone is defiant, if they go into opposition, or at least criticise the powers that be, there are consequences," Nagy told AFP.
He says he himself has been blacklisted after making a comment critical of a senior member of Orban's Fidesz party.
One producer was told that their film would not get financing if Nagy was in it, the actor said.
Nagy said Magyar could reach "millions of people who have (so far) preferred to stay away and not participate in the democracy just because they were so apathetic and frustrated".
Tough battle ahead
But Magyar faces tough resistance.
Orban has brushed off the challenge, but nonetheless "Fidesz has been making serious efforts to nip this movement in the bud," said political analyst Zoltan Lakner.
Posters commissioned by Fidesz have sprung up across the country, depicting Magyar as "Brussels' humble servant" alongside other opposition politicians.
He also faces negative coverage by media close to Fidesz, ranging from serious domestic abuse accusations, which he denies, to sneering at his "woman's sunglasses".
Last month, he said he came under investigation by the Sovereignty Protection Office, a controversial new government agency set up to curb foreign influence.
Magyar's supporters say his strength lies in knowing the system from the inside.
A lawyer by training, he worked for years as a diplomat in Brussels.
His ex-wife is a former Orban ally: former justice minister Judit Varga.
Magyar's biggest challenge, said Lakner, is to quickly build up his party, finding qualified people who do not pose a political risk causing "a lot of trouble later on".
"But if Magyar manages to unite opposition voters behind him, he can present a viable alternative for dissatisfied voters."
May 05, 2024
By Associated Press
A rising challenger to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban held what he called the largest countryside political demonstration in the country’s recent history Sunday, the latest stop on his campaign tour that has mobilized thousands across Hungary’s rural heartland.
Some 10,000 people gathered in Debrecen, Hungary’s second-largest city, in support of Peter Magyar, a political newcomer who in less than three months has shot to prominence on pledges to bring an end to problems like official corruption and a declining quality of life in the Central European country.
Supporters endured a brief but unexpected rain shower ahead of the afternoon demonstration, turning the city's central square into a sea of umbrellas. They waved Hungarian flags bearing the names of towns and villages across the country from which they had come.
“Today, the vast majority of the Hungarian people are tired of the ruling elite, of the hatred, apathy, propaganda and artificial divides,” Magyar told the crowd. “Hungarians today want cooperation, love, unity and peace.”
Magyar, a former insider within Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party, has since February denounced the nationalist Orban as running an entrenched “mafia state,” and declared war on what he calls a propaganda machine run by the government.
His party, TISZA (Respect and Freedom), has announced it will run 12 candidates in the June 9 European Union elections, with Magyar appearing first on the party list. TISZA has also announced it will run four candidates in local council elections in the capital Budapest.
His appearance Sunday in Debrecen, a stronghold of Orbán’s ruling Fidesz party, reflected the focus his fledgling campaign has placed on the Hungarian countryside, where Orban is popular.
The Mother’s Day event was the latest stop on a tour of the country where Magyar has appeared in dozens of cities, towns and villages, often drawing thousands of supporters — numbers that few Orban opponents have ever been able to mobilize in rural areas.
Addressing the crowd, he said that “government propaganda” had tried to discredit his movement as "just a downtown Budapest media hack,” and criticized Hungary's traditional opposition parties as having abandoned rural Hungarians.
“We’ve heard for 14 years from the opposition that it’s impossible in these circumstances to defeat Orban, that it’s not worth traveling to the countryside, that young people aren’t interested in politics, that you can’t break down the walls of propaganda,” he said. “But look around! What’s the truth?”
Katalin Nagy, who traveled several hours to the rally, said she finds Magyar credible “because he comes from the inside.”
“He’s aware of the things that are really causing problems in this country, and I think he can provide solutions to problems so that we can come out of the hole that this country is currently in,” she said.
Recent polls show that Magyar’s party may have become the largest opposition force in little more than a month before the election. Pollster Median this week measured TISZA at 25% among certain voters, with Orban’s Fidesz well ahead at 45%.
Governing party politicians have dismissed Magyar, who describes himself as a moderate conservative, as a leftist in disguise, and suggested that foreign interests lie behind his rise.
Orban and has party have ruled Hungary with a constitutional majority since 2010.
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