The winner of last Sunday’s elections in Hungary, Péter Magyar, announced this Wednesday that, as soon as he takes office as prime minister and forms a government, he will temporarily suspend the broadcast of news programs on public media, which, according to numerous national and international analysts, had in recent years become spokespersons for Viktor Orbán’s executive. Magyar has assured that he will restore press freedom, but specified that as long as those media continue to spread “propaganda,” they will not be allowed to broadcast news.
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The Tisza party of conservative Péter Magyar (a former collaborator of Orbán until he broke with him three years ago) won a landslide victory on Sunday —52% of the vote, two-thirds of the seats— ending 16 consecutive years of government by the ultranationalist and pro-Russian Viktor Orbán. During that time, Orbán became a reference point for the global far right.
“Every Hungarian deserves public media that spread the truth,” Magyar said during a joint interview on M1 and Kossuth Radio, the public television and radio, where Orbán was invited every week, while opposition politicians rarely had the chance to speak. In fact, Magyar had not been interviewed there for a year and a half.
“After forming the government, one of the first measures will be to suspend the news service of this propaganda outlet,” announced the Tisza leader amid considerable tension with the interviewer. The news programs of the Hungarian public media, Magyar added, have operated over these three decades in a way “that would have delighted Goebbels [Hitler’s Propaganda Minister in Nazi Germany] and North Korea.”
“We will need some time to pass a new media law, create a new media authority, and establish the professional conditions for state media to fulfill their function,” the future prime minister pointed out. After the interview, he wrote on the social network X: “We have just witnessed the last days of a propaganda machine. After the formation of the Tisza government, we will suspend the news services of public media until their public service character is restored.”
Immediately after leaving the studio, Magyar went to the headquarters of the presidency of Hungary to meet for the first time with Tamás Sulyok, the country’s president, who will be the one to commission him to form the government. There, the election winner urged Sulyok to resign immediately, considering him a puppet of the previous regime.
“He is not worthy of representing the unity of the Hungarian nation. He is not qualified to serve as guardian of legality. He is not qualified to serve as a moral authority or a role model. After the formation of the new government, Tamás Sulyok must leave office immediately,” Magyar wrote on X.
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“I told him that if he does not resign, we will use our mandate to amend the Constitution [and force that resignation],” the leader emphasized. According to what he told the press, Sulyok responded that he will “consider” his arguments. The president did advance on Facebook that, “in view of the election result,” he will commission Magyar to form the government.
The position of president in Hungary — which has practically no significant powers — is appointed by parliament; if Sulyok resigns, the new chamber, already with Tisza’s overwhelming majority, would elect the next one. Two years ago, when the previous president, Katalin Novák, resigned due to a scandal in a pardon case, Hungary was without a president for several weeks.
Péter Magyar aims to have his government ready before May 12. And, in his appearance before the press this Wednesday, he stated that informal talks with the EU to negotiate the unblocking of European funds for Hungary — nearly 18 billion euros that Brussels has kept frozen due to Orbán’s undemocratic drift — will begin even before the new government is in place, because the deadlines to recover those funds “are very tight”: Brussels must decide before August.
Trump: “He is a good man”
Magyar’s overwhelming victory has been a blow to the U.S. administration of Donald Trump, which had Orbán as a loyal ally and had publicly supported him — to the point that Vice President J. D. Trump went to Budapest in the final stretch of the campaign and Trump announced economic aid to Hungary if Orbán won —.
This Wednesday, Trump chose a conciliatory tone with the future prime minister: in a conversation with ABC channel journalist Jonathan Karl that the latter revealed on social media, the U.S. president said that Péter Magyar is a “good man” and predicted that he “will do a good job” leading Hungary.
