HUNGARY - A Brussels mercenary, a Ukrainian agent who wants to recruit Hungarian men, a corrupt charlatan, a fraud and generally a swindler and liar. This is how Viktor Orbán's ruling Fidesz party portrays Péter Magyar, the leader of the opposition and the Tisza party and the favorite for the 2026 Hungarian parliamentary elections.
Despite the Orbán government's campaign against him, the conservative opposition leader has become the country's most popular politician and his party has set record highs in the polls.
Of course, the upward trend seems to be weakening recently. Four months before the election, Tisza is stabilizing, while Fidesz seems to be recovering. In some polls, Tisza's lead has even dropped from ten to five percentage points.
According to observers, this is also due to Orbán's change of strategy. Recently, the Hungarian prime minister has made a series of promises, on many different issues, from the economy and taxation to social welfare issues. And at the same time, he has already made some expensive pre-election gifts, such as granting a 13th and 14th pension and introducing tax breaks - and all this despite the fact that the Hungarian budget deficit is growing and currently stands at around 5%, with zero growth, reduced tax revenues and frozen European funds.
Viktor Orbán has coined a catchphrase for this policy: “Even those who don’t vote for us benefit from us.” Meanwhile, while Orbán is plunging the country into long-term debt with his election handouts, he is simultaneously accusing other EU states of wasting the money of future generations by supporting Ukraine.
Orbán's "tsunami of promises," as local media and observers describe it, is also accompanied by a new campaign and further absurd accusations against Péter Magyar and Tisza.
Pensioners on Orban's side
Political scientist Zoltan Pogaca told DW that Fidesz appears to be closing in on Tisza in the polls because the government's latest campaign is aimed more at the undecided.
"They are afraid that their standard of living will decrease ," says the expert. This is how political analyst Andras Bíró-Nagy from the Institute for Policy Solutions assesses the situation. Fidesz wants to convince the undecided that the alleged costs of a change of government would be incalculable.
For his part, election expert Matthias Bodi told DW that pensioner benefits are particularly important for Fidesz. "They are the most important electoral group for the party, without whose support it would face a serious problem. That is why the government is trying to harmonize pensions with the real level of wages, hence the 14th pension, which is equivalent to an increase of 7-8%.
The idea that Orbán's policies benefit even those who do not vote for Fidesz is certainly a half-truth, which obscures the fact that in the authoritarian system of the prime minister, loyalty is rewarded, while opposition, independence or dissent is punished - and financially.
It is not difficult for Orbán's government to maintain this stance, given the country's centralized governance, which has been increasingly practiced since 2010, when the gradual devaluation of local government began.
The government is able to make detailed decisions on resource allocation. Empirical analyses by scholars show that municipalities where Fidesz is electorally dominant receive significantly more funding, while opposition municipalities and cities suffer.
A typical example was the case of the small city of Ghent that made international headlines in 2020. There, Fidesz lost the elections in October 2019 - and in the spring of 2020, the government, with an emergency law due to the pandemic, expropriated part of the industrial area in Ghent, resulting in the city losing a large part of its tax revenue.
Budapest on the verge of bankruptcy
In the country’s capital, Budapest, the center-left Gergely Karacsony has been mayor since 2019. And since the day he was elected, Orbán’s government has tried by all means to drive the capital towards economic collapse — sometimes by forcing Budapest to pay disproportionately large sums into the state budget, sometimes by artificially imposing cuts or withholding the city’s legal dues. Orbán does not hesitate to openly express disparaging characteristics about the capital and its administration.
Having exhausted its financial reserves, Budapest is now facing bankruptcy. Last week, Mayor Karacsony himself walked to the Prime Minister's Office to personally deliver a letter to Orbán asking for help and a solution to his economic problems.
Orbán, on the other hand, simply sent a secretary to retrieve the document. Earlier this week, Karacsony again walked to the prime minister's office, this time with hundreds of workers and supporters - but again without success.
It is uncertain how far the government's political boycott of Budapest will go. At other times, of course, Orbán seems to find it more useful to help some municipalities without much bureaucracy. In mid-November, he issued decrees approving rapid financial aid for investments in 70 municipalities. The Portal 444 platform discovered that, coincidentally, these were precisely the small towns and municipalities where Péter Magyar had recently appeared for election rallies./ DW
