Hungarian Conservative

Despite focusing his campaign on fighting against corruption and for more transparency in politics, opposition firebrand Péter Magyar decided to jump into the 2024 EP and municipal elections in a very unusual: he founded a civil organization around himself, then that organization partnered with a ‘phantom party’ founded in 2021 to get Magyar’s candidates on the ballot.

‘There is an evident deficit in competence between the right-wing and left-wing organizations in this country. Part of it has to do with competent, otherwise not ideological people gravitating toward the side more likely to win. In cases like the so-called “alternative referendum” initiative that deficit is put on glaring display.’

MP Fekete-Győr was convicted of assault on a public official, for throwing a smoke grenade at police officers at a 2018 protest. István Hollik of the ruling Fidesz party has called on him to resign, which he is refusing to do.

While the new liberal government in Poland has brought the country to the brink of a constitutional crisis within a month, Hungarian MP Márton Tompos from the leftist Momentum party is apparently looking to emulate the Polish Prime Minister, and is threatening with similar retaliation in the low chance of a leftist takeover in Hungary.

In the year 2023, a political mechanism was broken in Hungary: even downturns and runaway inflation could not dramatically alter the balance of political power.

European debates tend to ignore the fact that Hungarian politics—sometimes peculiar and certainly unusual to many Western observers—is not meant to curb liberties or enable oppression but, on the contrary, to further freedom and efforts to attain it.

The spring session of Parliament began on Monday. The Prime Minister stated that the Hungarian government is on the side of peace, and pointed out that peace is also the only way inflation can be stopped within the EU.

Many politicians from smaller and less successful opposition parties have transferred to DK since the last election in April 2022. The reshuffling of old faces, however, is unlikely to bring more electoral support for DK.