Most Hungarians came to take his achievements for granted and won’t appreciate what they had until it’s gone.
Andrew Korybko
The EU- and Ukrainian- backed Hungarian opposition just won a two-thirds supermajority in the latest parliamentary elections that ended Viktor Orban’s 16 years in office. His crushing defeat followed the EU earlier freezing €17 billion in allocated funds on rule of law pretexts, Russiagate conspiracy theories derived from wiretaps of Orban and his Foreign Minister, and Ukrainian energy blackmail as well as threats. Liberal-globalists like Ursula von der Leyen, Alex Soros, and Donald Tusk predictably celebrated.
While
the aforementioned factors played a role in turning public opinion
against Orban, several other ones were arguably more important. For
instance, he’s an older politician who naturally doesn’t appeal as much
to the youth as his relatively younger rival, Peter Magyar. He’s also
been in office for 16 years, so the opposition played on anti-incumbent
sentiment, to which end they blamed him for the stagnant economy despite
him doing his best given the circumstances. Corruption accusations also
abounded.
The socio-political system that Orban built will
now be dismantled since the opposition’s two-thirds supermajority
enables them to change the constitution.
Witch hunts against conservative-nationalists, beginning with him and
his Foreign Minister on Russiagate-related grounds, also can’t be ruled
out. His policies in support of traditional values might soon become a
thing of the past. Although Magyar claims to be an immigration
hardliner, he might reverse course to please the EU, thus flooding
Hungary.
On the economic front, decoupling from
Russian energy could lead to price spikes, though he might move
gradually to avoid squandering the goodwill that he has among the
electorate. The same goes for his plans to replace the forint, Hungary’s
national currency, with the euro. Therefore, while meaningful change is
afoot, it might not happen right away. Nevertheless, the end result will be the weakening of Hungarian sovereignty and possibly its outright loss, thus reversing Orban’s hard-earned achievements.
Likewise, Hungary isn’t expected to retain its reputation as Europe’s conservative-nationalist bastion, with this instead shifting to Poland,
which was in a friendly competition with Hungary for this title till
its own (admittedly very imperfect) conservative-nationalists were
“democratically deposed” in fall 2023. Last year, however, Poland
narrowly elected a conservative-nationalist president and the former
ruling party with which he’s allied might return to power after fall
2027’s next parliamentary elections.
Polish
conservatism differs from its more well-known Hungarian and German
variants in being explicitly anti-Russian. It also envisages Europe in
junior partnership with the US instead of truly sovereign and opposing
the US when their interests diverge. From the Polish perspective, this
is a necessary cost for ensuring continued US support against Russia and
“pragmatically” recognizes the limitations to European leadership, but
it’s of course controversial and unpopular outside of Poland and the Baltic States.
All in all, the EU, Ukraine, and liberal-globalists across the West will be emboldened by the dramatic way in which the “Battle for Hungary”
ended, which will facilitate the EU’s transition to de facto war
footing. Orban stood in the way of this but now he’s been
“democratically deposed”. Others such as like-minded Czechia and Slovakia might try to replace Hungary’s role, but they’re considered more vulnerable to EU pressure, including Color Revolutions. The EU’s march to war with Russia might therefore be inevitable