Péter Márki-Zay, the candidate for prime minister for the united opposition in last year’s parliamentary election, announced the formation of his new party in a press conference on Saturday, 24 June. Márki-Zay has been serving as the independent mayor of Hódmezővásárhely, a town of around 40,000 residents in Southern Hungary, since 2018. Now, his new political party, the Mindenki Magyarországa Néppárt (Everyone’s Hungary People’s Party), has been officially registered with the courts.

At the press conference held in front of the Parliament building in Budapest, the two vice presidents of the freshly established organisation made brief remarks, while the flags of the European Union and Hungary were being held up by party members in the background. Party VP Tibor Bana told the scarce audience that they felt, based on voters’ feedback after last year’s election, that Hungarians needed a new political force, because currently,

no political party could do an adequate job of offering an alternative to the system in place now.

That is despite that he also believes that there are ‘active, honest, and dedicated people’ serving in every other party as well.

He went on to make other unifying gestures, such as saying that ‘corruption has no colour’, meaning that they intend on calling out corrupt behaviour on both sides of the aisle. He also described the new MMN, the preferred abbreviation for their new organisation, as ‘a European, Western party’; then shared technical details, such as that preregistration is open, and their founding convention will be held in September.

The other party VP Róbert Molnár, mayor of the small town of Kübekháza also in Southern Hungary, hit a much more critical and sinister tone in his short speech. He called the current Fidesz rule ‘a tyranny’, and lamented that some of the Fidesz leaders, who were once fighting for a regime change and the end of the undemocratic Soviet regime, are now working to undermine democracy in Hungary themselves.

At last, party president Péter Márki-Zay took the microphone. He stressed the aspects in which his new party significantly differs from other opposition blocs currently in parliament. One of the distinguishing features is that

MMN is intending on not taking any funding from the government, rather, surviving on supporters’ donations alone.

However, based on the meager attendance of the inaugural press conference, and the lack of high-volume interaction online, it is questionable if they have the backing to do so.

Also, Márki-Zay concurred that, ‘Viktor Orbán’s political system is so strong that it cannot be defeated in elections held under its own rules’, therefore, he ominously stressed, they need ‘resistance, not opposition’.

About their long-term goals, the party leader outlined that they are aiming for a ‘change of culture’, which would also include not blindly resisting anything the Fidesz party does, but actually acknowledging it if the current administration does something that benefits the Hungarian people. Also,

MMN is planning on joining the European People’s Party group in the European Parliament.

However, Márki-Zay did stress that this would be the end of a long process. At first, MMN is not even planning on running candidates in the 2024 municipal and local government elections in 2024. Rather, they are looking to first put candidates on the ballot in the 2026 parliamentary elections.

After taking the floor, Márki-Zay summarised the reasons why he felt the need to create a new political party as such:

‘I want to thank my fellow ambitious politicians who felt it is time to establish a political organisation in Hungary which can selflessly, while believing in a Western culture, serve as a ideological and moral home for a big part of the Hungarian thinkers and public figures who are critical of the current administration, but may not have found their ideological home in the current pallet of Hungarian political parties.’

Péter Márki-Zay’s Unsuccessful Run For Prime Minister

Back in 2022, Márki-Zay was not an official member of any Hungarian party. Everyone’s Hungary was only an unofficial movement then. However, he did manage to win the first-ever held primary election for the united opposition candidacy in the autumn of 2021, thus he ran for prime minister with the backing of six political parties in April 2022. He ended up underperforming expectations and capturing only 34.5 per cent of the popular vote, which resulted in the ruling Fidesz-KDNP coalition actually gaining seats in the National Assembly, and thus maintaining the constitution-amending supermajority in the House.