By Dr. Miklos K. Radvanyi
The first three months of Hungary’s new government have produced something the country has not experienced for sixteen years: genuine political optimism. Viktor Orban’s Gangsterocracy is seemingly gone for good. Hungary has begun repairing its relationship with Europe. The suffocating fusion of party, state, and economic privileges are being dismantled. Institutions are being reorganized. Health and education have returned to the center of government politics. Already, these are important achievements.
Yet, precisely because the TISZA Party succeeded where Hungary’s fragmented opposition repeatedly failed in the past, Peter Magyar the head of the TISZA Party with its two-third supermajority in the Hungarian Parliament and the Prime Minister since May 9, 2026, must not become the Anti-Orban Orban. Among Viktor Orban’s innumerable destructive political achievements the most catastrophic was his successful persuasion of the vast majority of Hungarians that the long-awaited salvation of the nation depended upon one man. Peter Magyar is on the way to repeat that mistake. His grateful supermajority becomes so enthusiastic for the liberation from Viktor Orban’s tyrannical Gangsterocracy that it will neglect to care about how its liberator intends to govern. That would be the repetition of several historical mistakes. The fundamental tragedy of the Orban era was never merely Viktor Orban. It was the complete concentration of political power in the hands of Viktor Orban.
The TISZA Party’s supermajority is primarily a test and only secondarily a prize. The Hungarian voters gave the TISZA Party an enormous parliamentary mandate to have the means to reconstruct the Hungarian state. It also provides Peter Magyar with the means to dominate it. That is why the new government’s supermajority should not be regarded simply as an electoral prize. It is a constitutional test. Viktor Orban repeatedly invoked his electoral victories as not just legal, but also moral authorization for self-aggrandizing institutional transformations. FIDESZ won elections; therefore, FIDESZ claimed the right to rewrite constitutional arrangements, reorganize public institutions, appoint loyalists and redefine at will the relationship between government and state. The TISZA government must be exceedingly careful not to reproduce the same reasoning. Democratic legitimacy does not convert unlimited power into constitutional government. This distinction lies at the heart of constitutionalism. Moreover, if constitutional offices become dependent upon the political identity of the parliamentary supermajority, Hungary will not have restored the independence of institutions. It will merely have changed who controls them.
De-Orbanization cannot become TISZA-ization. Clearly, Hungary requires de-Orbanization. However, it does not require TISZA-ization. That distinction should become the moral boundary of the new government. Yes, former corrupt officials must be investigated because evidence warrants investigation – not because they served Viktor Orban. Illegally acquired property should be recovered because courts determine that it was illegally acquired – not because its owners belonged to the previous political “elite” – called in Hungarian the NER. Public institutions must be reorganized because they cannot perform their constitutional functions – not because their leadership is politically suspect. And judges, prosecutors, journalists, academics, and civil servants should never be required to exchange yesterday’s loyalty for today’s. Otherwise, Hungary will have learned remarkably little from the past sixteen years of Viktor Orban’s tyrannical Gangsterocracy. The objective of democratic reconstruction is not to replace one political clientele with another. It is to abolish political clientelism itself.
The fourth warning is that the government must stop fighting yesterday’s elections. Peter Magyar must not behave like the leader of the opposition. Every government failure cannot be answered with an explanation of what FIDESZ did before May 2026. Every criticism cannot be answered by reminding Hungarians how much worse things were previously. Soon those explanations will become politically irrelevant. Citizens waiting for surgery are not ultimately interested in the administrative history of the hospital. The parent dissatisfied with a school does not want another lecture about FIDESZ. The commuter standing beside a delayed train does not care which government originally neglected the railway. The entrepreneur facing excessive bureaucracy does not want another investigation into yesterday’s corruption. Citizens eventually will ask one brutal question from Peter Magyar’s government: What have you done about your campaign promises?
The fifth comment is about corruption. Corruption must be dealt with severely, but the TISZA government must avoid criminalizing politics. The distinction between justice and revenge must remain absolute. Judges and prosecutors cannot become instruments for satisfying the understandable anger accumulated during sixteen years of FIDESZ tyrannical Gangsterocracy. Nothing would demonstrate Hungary’s democratic transformation more convincingly than former rulers receiving precisely the due process that their opponents sometimes feared they themselves would not receive. The rule of law is most convincing when it protects people we dislike.
The following observation is that European Union money is not an economic policy. Peter Magyar’s normalization of Hungary’s relations with the European Union has been one of his government’s clearest successes. Yet, recovering European funds must not be confused with rebuilding the Hungarian economy. Hungary’s economic weaknesses are structural: disappointing productivity, demographic decline, shortages of skilled labor, regional inequality, the lack of investment capital, which leads to excessive dependence upon foreign investment, an unpredictable regulatory environment, and an education system, which like the overwhelming number of the member states of the European Union have inadequately prepared for the technological economy now emerging. European Union billions can provide breathing room. They cannot substitute for reforms. In particular because Hungary has almost reached its limits as a net recepient of European Union monies. Indeed, one of the great failures of post-Socialist Hungary has been its tendency to seek prosperity from outside itself – foreign investment, European transfers, multinational manufacturing – rather than constructing the domestic intellectual and entrepreneurial infrastructure upon which lasting prosperity depends. Peter Magyar and his ministers must resist the temptation to become merely a more competent distributor of European money, which is the foundation of the uniquely Hungarian corruption. Hungary needs a government that makes Hungarians capable of creating more wealth themselves.
Finally, can institutions say no to Peter Magyar? Can the Constitutional Court tell him that legislation supported by his parliamentary supermajority violates the Constitution? Can prosecutors investigate a TISZA politician? Can the State Audit Office expose misconduct inside his government? Can public television criticize him? Can universities ridicule his policies? Can newspapers attack his character? Can municipalities controlled by his opponents refuse his wishes? Can judges rule against his government without fearing consequences? If the answer becomes yes, Peter Magyar will have accomplished something Viktor Orban never did. He will have created institutions stronger than himself. If the answer becomes no, all of the TISZA government’s democratic rhetoric will ultimately matter very little.
Hungary’s historical misery predates both Viktor Orban and Peter Magyar. Hungarians have repeatedly searched for political salvation in personalities rather than institutions. Peter Magyar’s responsibility is not merely to reverse Viktor Orban’s Gangsterocracy. It is to completely reverse Viktor Orban’s tyrannical philosophy of power. That requires both political courage and political self-restraint. Viktor Orban was resoundingly defeated. Peter Magyar’s greatest opponent is now the political temptation Viktor Orban left behind: the seductive belief that because one possesses democratic legitimacy, good intentions, and an enormous parliamentary majority, one should use every instrument of power available. That is how constitutional erosion begins. He should remember one overriding principle of governing every morning when he enters the prime minister’s office: The ultimate achievement of democratic leadership is not acquiring enough power to transform the country. It is transforming the country while refusing to exercise all the power one possesses.