Péter Magyar, the ex-husband of former minister of justice Judit Varga, has been drawing a lot of attention lately. Ever since he broke away from his positions held in government-controlled ventures and came forward with allegations of system-level corruption in February he has been getting non-stop attention from the liberal opposition-aligned media, has been drawing huge crowds in the capital city of Budapest, as well as a large volume of engagement on his social media posts.
It was only a matter of time before he tried to parlay that attention into tangible political power. However, he was on a tight schedule: he stepped into the public arena only four months away from the European and municipal elections in Hungary in June.
Magyar announced the foundation of the civil organization Talpra Magyarok Közössége (the name is a reference to the first line of Sándor Petőfi’s revolutionary poem National Song translated by Adam Makkai as: ‘Rise up, Magyar, the country calls!’) at his 15 March national holiday celebration—however, that was a civil organization, not a political party. Thus, getting on the ballot on the 9 June election was still a tall order for him, with less than three months left until then.
A solution to his conundrum has come at last. In a social media post, Magyar announced his movement is partnering with the Respect and Freedom Party (TISZA) to run candidates in the EP and municipal elections.
The TISZA Party was founded in 2021. However, it is an organization that can only be described as a ‘phantom party’, as it, despite its initial public pledge, failed to nominate a single candidate in the 2022 parliamentary election, and thus failed to get a single vote.
This is an odd way to start someone’s political career.
Party branding is very important in elections. A large section of the electorate is not following the news attentively. Therefore, it is important that they find symbols they can easily identify on the ballot.
Péter Magyar’s Talpra Magyarok NGO is a brand new organization that would have needed substantial PR work to make it a noticeable brand for Hungarian voters to begin with. Now, they will have to deal with the additional confusion of becoming a civil organization inside a political party, so voters will have to learn to identify Péter Magyar’s movement by both—all that in less than three months.
Additionally, it is yet to be confirmed if Péter Magyar himself would be running in any of the elections, either for a seat in the European Parliament or a position in a municipal government within Hungary. So far, his has been the single face and name attached to the new movement. If his name fails to appear on the ballot, that could have disastrous consequences for the movement, which, in turn, could kill all his momentum going forward.
Furthermore,
running a campaign in this convoluted way does not scream ‘transparency’ for a reasonable observer.
This does not seem to be in sync with Magyar’s message of clearing Hungarian politics of corruption and making it more transparent. Some have already speculated that the reason he opted to form a civil organization around himself, as opposed to a political party, was to be subject to less strict regulation ahead of the election.
Péter Márki-Zay became the opposition coalition’s nominee in the 2022 Hungarian election in a very similar way. He too only had a civil movement around him, but no party. In 2022, his coalition got 34.5 per cent of the popular vote. Meanwhile, Fidesz–KDNP won with a constitutional supermajority for the fourth time in a row. They did so with their highest vote share ever, winning 54.1 per cent of the popular vote.
Magyar, aged 43, is a lawyer by trade. He has not held any major position in any branch of government in his life, nor has he ever had any outstanding success in the private sector.
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