The leader of the opposition party Tisza, Péter Magyar, has announced that if his team wins two-thirds of parliamentary seats in the April 12 elections, they will carry out a constitutional reform and fully purge key state institutions of allies of incumbent Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
Speaking at a campaign rally in northeastern Hungary, Magyar called Orbán’s regime a “mafia” and stressed that a genuine transfer of power requires a constitutional majority. This would allow the dismissal of officials loyal to the current government who head key bodies: the country’s president, the chairs of supreme courts, the prosecutor general, and the heads of the competition authority and the state audit office.
“We are asking voters for a two-thirds majority to rewrite the constitution and complete the regime change after 16 years of Orbán’s rule,” Magyar stated. He added that such a victory would make it possible to restore democracy and judicial independence and return Hungary to a pro-European path by severing its close ties with Russia.
Péter Magyar, a former Fidesz member, has transformed the little-known Tisza party into Orbán’s main rival over the past two years. Polls show his party leading or running nearly neck-and-neck with the ruling Fidesz, and many analysts consider the current election the most competitive in the past decade and a half.
Orbán and his supporters, for their part, accuse the opposition of acting on orders from Brussels and attempting to surrender national interests. The prime minister himself has not yet directly commented on Magyar’s latest statements, but his campaign is built around the themes of migration, the war in Ukraine, and the defense of “Hungarian sovereignty.”
Less than three weeks remain until the vote. If Tisza does indeed secure a supermajority, Hungary could — for the first time in 16 years — undergo a sweeping purge of the state apparatus and constitutional changes: precisely what Orbán himself once successfully carried out.