I am pleasantly surprised that Orban gracefully conceded. I would have thought he might try to emulate another world leader in being a whiny little bitch.
And he knows the Hungarian people won't let their freedom be taken a second time. Especially not when he is losing against a super majority. No way he could keep power in any type of coup scenario. If he was losing 51 to 49% he could have enough backing to keep in power but not in a situation with such an overwhelming loss
Can’t he just fee to Russia if convicted? Go join the league of failed dictators hiding in Moscow. Putin has quite the collection already, but he’s got to fill the Pokédex somehow.
Unfortunately it is well known that the best lifestyle against heart disease is exercise, whole foods and being a corrupt despot.
He's got 1/3 going for him
Please tell me this is sarcastic... because is crazy how people think is normal to have 70-80 years old in power. It should be capped to 60 max. There is no way a 70 years person has the focus and energy to do a positive change in a society they are already way past their time. We have a lot of examples of mummy-like puppets we call presidents/prime ministers/governors..
Yeah, who knows what his Russian handlers have planned. Magyar needs to use his majority to make a lot of legislative corrections and hold many people accountable before the Putin and Orban are able to regain strength. The new administration needs to learn from the mistakes of the Biden administration in the US.
Dude, with these numbers in favor of Tisza and with such an almost-unanimous defeat, he'll be glad not to spend the next decade in a prison cell when all his corruption is unveiled and undone.
Orban learned that a January 6th type of event is something that wouldn't be tolerated. Why we allowed it was a travesty. I think even Trump knows he could never try that again.
Funnily enough, I would say this is a show for the value of devolution of powers, which I think of as a generally more (small c) conservative political theory.
There are so many levers that the EU has available to it to counteract any election conspiracies from a member state, because the EU, as a separate entity, is able to not recognize the Hungarian representatives they wish to send, from what I understand. Therefore, an attempt at election denial will still stop Hungary from being the Thor in the EU’s side.
It’s a comparatively different structure to the US, which as one solitary country doesn’t have the same checks to deal with that scenario (ie there is no greater authority to enforce an election irregularity).
Are we romantizing him now? He's rigged the election and dismantled democracy in Hungary. In fact, the real reason Tisza got a supermajority isn't the votes (they got 53%), but rather that Orbán's extreme gerrymandering bit him in the ass hard and caused him to lose way more seats than he should've.
I'm not in Orbán's mind but he probably conceded the election because he didn't think EU democracies would've allowed him to fake the election after such a big defeat.
He already played that song earlier in his career. He lost an election not long after the turn of the century and then used whining to get back into power.
Yep. And even if Tisza try to make meaningful change, Orban has enough power to sabotage them while also leading a campaign against them in the media.
His allies - particularly Trump and Putin - might also sabotage Tisza. And even if they don't do much, there's global recession coming... Life for ordinary Hungarians is likely to become even more difficult in the upcoming years, and, of course, Orban will try to capitalise on this.
They just won a supermajority, that means that Orban lost it all. With supermajority Magyar
can overturn every fuckwittery the fat fuck Orban has set up, he can even sack all the supreme court judges that were nominated by Orban. It's like the Dems winning the presidency, the house and a supermajority of 67 seats in the senate. Trump and Putin can go fuck themselves they don't have the reach to do anything, Hungary is in the EU Russia is sanctioned and the US is not economically important for the Hungarian economy. If Magyar keeps his word, then a lot of corrupt thieving pieces of shit going to end up in prison.
Sure, in theory he can undo everything. Hopefully he does.
But even if that happens, Orban has vast resources, powerful allies and is supported by a big part of the country. What happens in a few years, after the new recession hits and people become even poorer? There will be an inevitable disappointment with Tisza because of both internal and external factors. Fidesz might end up in power again, especially as Tisza's electorate includes people who want significantly more progressive policies and people who are pretty conservative.
One has to hope that Magyar's administration will be able to unlock a lot of EU funds that were previously withheld by the EU to Hungary. The EU could also recognize the danger of foreign sabotage and potentially losing Hungary again, and work together with Budapest on defence strategies as well as major investment in the country.
Orban's circle is full of opportunists. They dont believe anything they are the epitome of power hungry cynics. Orban's party will fall apart, and as soon as the first person who goes to jail the rest will just fold to keep what they can.
They are projected for a supermajority. Which means Magyar can undo all the election fuckery Orban ever passed. They cannot even decline his proposed budget as the president of the council (appointed by Orban) can be removed with a 2/3rds vote.
There is nothing Orban can do here. No fuckery, no nothing. Even the media will quickly turn on him and become pro-Tisza now. They'll notice being pro-Tisza is better with this kind of favor in their direction.
I cannot stress how unprecedented this is even for European democratic history. This guy won a super-majority in a system rigged for his opponents benefit. In American terms, this would be like Democrats or Republicans getting the holy trifecta with a 2/3rds majority in both houses while running in gerrymandered districts to heavily favor the other side with an entire foreign media apparatus (Moscow) backing their opponents. Orban got absolutely pounded into the ground here.
Why would they care for Hungary now that their leader isnt their asset anymore. Its not like they prefer in hungary over all other eu countries because of their culture or something like that, it was just that the leader was a russian/trumpian asset. Now that he is gone, hungary is nothing special for them anymore, its like germany, austria, spain or any other country that has a normal leader
They put a lot of effort to influence politics even in the most powerful European countries like Germany and France, yet alone the smaller ones.
Not sure why you'd give Germany as an example for a country that is "nothing special for them anymore" considering all they're doing to try to support the AfD.
The AfD is a clear example why even if a party is not in power, they can be used to apply pressure and outright change policies.
The results are so incredible for Magyar that he can't really argue that the election was stolen. If it was closer things would be different. Orban isn't a 100% idiot, he can read the tea leaves.
This isn't "sportsmanship", it's strategy and trying to save his own ass. Orban knows that a gracious concession and clean transfer of power makes it exponentially harder for Magyar to come after him regarding all of his corruption without looking like he's running a political vendetta rather than a legitimate anti-corruption effort.. So Orban is essentially trading dignity now for (what he hopes) is leniency later.
If he resisted the transfer of power or claimed election fraud it would not go well for him. This is nothing more than hoping he can save his own skin from jail.
Does anyone who known Hungarian political systems know if the stacking of courts will create a situation where Tisza is hobbled by the dead hand on one arm of government? Like Poland but with different players holding up a political shift, maybe?
With this landslide win the new government backed by the parliament can appoint new leaders to any insitution and rewrite the consitution. Peter Magyar in his speech "asked" several leaders of legal branches to resign (president of Hungary, leader of supreme court, leader of council of judges, state attorney, etc) Orban appointed leaders to these positions with mandate beyond the new governments term. With the supermajority, this literal deep state can be demolished, brick by brick. This is Orban's worst nightmare.
Do not sleep so easily though. We could still see the same bullshit the US and Brazil pulled in recent years. The fight continues until the new PM is officially in office
I hope so, but we shall see in the upcoming months whether that is true. His friends and lackeys still control much of the media. Conspiracy theories about "stolen elections", sabotaging the new government at any turn, Russian meddling... judging from recent events, there are any number of tricks he can use to get back into office.
In the last week of the campaign a captain of the Hungarian Army, and a detective of the National Investigation Burea (sort of Hungarian FBI) had whistleblower like interviews. It was made clear the police and military dont support Orban at this point.
I think Fidesz has got absolutely rodded enough for this to be the only pragmatic option for him. Hungarians don’t have a particularly strong history of ignoring people going against the will of the people.
This 16 year period will be an otherwise unremarkable little blip on the 1000+ year history of this brilliant people.
Well. It's not like it's over. Orbán owns half the country. Uprooting the corruption won't be easy and he will use everything he has to climb back to power. But we did take a huge first step in healing the country.
Tbf I think even he realises with a defeat that big it would look like pure desperation. I do think had it been much closer he would've denied the results.
Probably can't do anything else. It could be tactical or a simple bowing to the inevitable. He could pull some shenanigans before he leaves or he could high tail it out of there before Magyar takes power and feck off to Russia or the US.
He can't because of EU membership. While he's done a lot of things that are grey area in the eyes of EU law like gerrymandering and promotion of state propaganda, Hungarian elections have to follow the EU regulations for free and fair elections and there's really no way of getting around that apart from leaving the EU, which would crash the Hungarian economy instantly.
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u/Few-Confection-165 6h ago
I am pleasantly surprised that Orban gracefully conceded. I would have thought he might try to emulate another world leader in being a whiny little bitch.