Magyar urges swift power transfer after landslide ends Orbán era

Péter Magyar moved swiftly after his landslide victory over Viktor Orbán, pressing for an immediate handover of power in a result that ended Orbán’s 16 years of continuous rule and put Hungary’s institutions under fresh scrutiny. Magyar said the election gave him a mandate for sweeping change after a vote marked by record turnout, the highest since Hungary’s 1990 democratic transition.

Preliminary and near-final counts showed Magyar’s centre-right Tisza party winning about 138 of 199 seats in parliament, enough for a two-thirds majority if confirmed. Tisza led with 53.6 percent of the vote, compared with 37.8 percent for Orbán’s Fidesz, and Orbán conceded defeat, calling the outcome “painful” but clear. The scale of the result gave Magyar political room to move quickly on the first test of post-Orbán governance: whether the presidency and parliament would facilitate a clean transfer of authority.

Magyar said he wanted to be in office by about May 5 and called on President Tamás Sulyok to immediately give him the mandate to form a government and then resign. Sulyok, who is backed by Orbán’s camp, was expected to nominate Magyar as prime minister, while the president must convene the new parliament within 30 days of the election. Magyar also said he would push to restore checks and balances, reverse what he described as Hungary’s drift into an authoritarian system, and unlock frozen European Union funds.

The next phase of Magyar’s rise is likely to be defined as much by institutions as by politics. He has said his first foreign trips would be to Warsaw, then Vienna and Brussels, signaling an early push to reset ties with European partners and to recast Hungary’s role inside the European Union. The outcome is being watched closely in Kyiv, Moscow and Washington because it could alter Hungary’s relations with Russia, the European Commission and the Trump administration.

Donald Trump, who had campaigned for Orbán, later told ABC News that he was not concerned about Orbán’s loss and called Magyar “a good man,” saying he thought the incoming leader would do a good job. European leaders, including Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, praised the result. Magyar, once an admirer of Orbán who later broke with Fidesz over corruption and propaganda, now faces the harder task of proving that a landslide can become a durable transfer of power.