On Sunday, April 12, Hungarians finally said “NO” to their Russian Trojan horse, Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who had ruled Hungary for 16 years. Orban’s defeat is not just a Hungarian story. It is a political earthquake felt from Budapest to Belgrade. It is the rupture of a narrative that has fueled authoritarian systems in the Balkans for years: that democracy is weak, that institutions are an obstacle, that the people want bread, not a system. Orban was proof of this thesis. Now he has become its gravedigger.
By Radomir DIMIĆ
In the Hungarian parliamentary elections, the leader of TISA, Peter Magyar, won convincingly, putting an end to the criminal rule of corruption and neoliberalism. Corruption, as usual, was shown to be the cause of the fall of autocrats. And this is exactly what happened to Orban. Magyar defeated him precisely on this platform.
The strong April wind from the Danube simply swept and toppled Viktor after 16 years. Fallen, as it seemed, was an untouchable figure, a “troublemaker”, an openly pro-Putinist politician of the “Trumpist” type. Whether he has finally ended up in the dustbin of history remains to be seen, but such authoritarian leaders have a very hard time recovering from such blows. However, he accepted defeat, which means that he is truly disappointed. Hungary breathed a sigh of relief and showed that it is also part of Europe, which Viktor Orban, especially since the beginning of the Russian aggression in Ukraine, had wanted to isolate. Democratic elections proved effective again and strengthened the meaning of democracy. The extraordinary turnout in the elections, almost 80%, shows that the Hungarians had really “got their fill”.
The two-thirds victory of Peter Magyar, who until recently was an ally of Orban, shows that even against such an opponent, an election race can be won, which was prepared in advance by the most powerful world players to end in defeat. However, neither Vladimir Putin, nor Donald Trump, nor the stagings by the FSB laboratories with the help of Aleksandar Vučić, when an attempt was made to create a political and security crisis with the so-called sabotage attempt on the gas pipeline in the Vojvodina city of Kanjiža, helped. According to the plans, this was supposed to serve as an additional “electoral” boost for Orban.
They even calculated by postponing the elections due to the alleged security threat. Neither the scaremongering with war and the “bad Ukrainians”, nor the threats of freezing due to Russian gas helped. So this is not only a victory for the Hungarians, but also a relief for Europe, because Budapest will once again be a cooperative member, not an informant of the Kremlin.
Peter Magyar, with the help of his citizens, has put Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump and Aleksandar Vučić in an even more difficult situation, because this “wind from the Danube” can now blow towards Belgrade. The Kremlin is certainly, to put it mildly, unhappy, having lost an important destabilizing lever in Europe.
In Washington, too, there will be “teeth gnashing” because Donald Trump got involved and sent JD Vance to exert influence, but the result turned out to be counterproductive. So what does the fall of Viktor Orban mean for Aleksandar Vucic and the political scene in Serbia? It will be a signal for the anti-regime bloc in Serbia, because the fall of Orban showed that even in systems built to the measure of the autocrat, democratic forces can win. That such an outcome is real and possible is best shown by the words and messages that Peter Magyar gave in his first speech regarding Serbia.
He said that he sends a message to the Serbian people to draw strength from Sunday’s elections in Hungary and continued: the government in which TISA will have a majority will also investigate the alleged attack on the gas pipeline near Kanjiža, close to the Hungarian border. His goal is for relations between Hungary and Serbia to remain good, primarily because of the Hungarians of Vojvodina, although he hinted that he knows who “arranged” the great friendship between Aleksandar Vučić, Viktor Orbán and Robert Fico.
Peter Magyar also added that during the election campaign, an action resembling a so-called “false flag” operation took place during Easter week, as if an alleged sabotage attempt on the gas pipeline had been planned, which Prime Minister Orban had spoken about a week earlier, warning that something like this would happen – he recalled. “So, to say that this was staged quite inexperiencedly, and it was seen that the organizers pulled out of this and did not go to the end, as much as the superiors from Russia and some other centers of power expected. I think they did well, because the TISA government will investigate what exactly happened in Kanjizha in Serbia. Was there a real danger – because it is possible that there was. But if there was a real danger, then the prime minister should have led the state, and not played a show during Easter week, flying there by helicopter to Aleksandar Vučić and gathering all the Hungarian propaganda in work helmets and uniforms to ‘scare’ them together. In such a situation, the prime minister should guarantee the security of the country.”
Peter Magyar also added that he knows exactly what is happening in Serbia and that he is well aware of the connections that have existed between Viktor Orban’s government and Serbia led by President Aleksandar Vučić, as well as that he knows roughly who is behind these relations – who is the “godfather” of these great friendships.
To this reaction of Magyar, in which Serbia was mentioned, Aleksandar Vučić reacted immediately and in a worried manner, confirming that he had been more than friends with the now deposed Hungarian Prime Minister and acknowledging that they have the same “godfather”, which, according to him, is “freedom of speech, thought and action”. In his well-known, non-diplomatic style, he addressed Magyar with the words: “Come on, answer, since you know, tell me who the godfather is. He has no idea”, and continued by saying that we should not worry about relations with Hungarians and Hungary, calling that statement “stupidity”. He also sent a message to Magyar that Serbia is not his country and he has no competence to conduct investigations.
It is clear that Peter Magyar’s victory has shocked him so much that it has completely taken him out of his shell. Because this victory is a signal to all people in the countries of the region that the local “modern dictators” are defeatable and that their end is approaching – first and foremost that of Aleksandar Vučić.
Hence such a reaction of this angry and frightened dictator, whose ground is slipping under his feet. But, unlike the Hungarians, the Serbs need four Peter Magyar to dismantle the dictatorial system and the predatory “octopus”. And for this reason, learn – children, students and young people – from this Mr. Magyar, because there is truly a lot to learn.