Lessons from Hungary’s vote and Orbán’s defeat©Kavita Krishnan

Lessons from Hungary’s vote and Orbán’s defeat

Kavita Krishnan

Feminist activist

and writer whose forthcoming book

is ‘The Global De-Democratisation Project: Script,

Actors, Enablers’

Hungarian voters have swept their far-right strongman Viktor Orbán out of office, ending his 16-year run as Prime Minister and electoral autocrat. Here are six lessons the world can take from them.

First, an illiberal democracy can be ousted in elections. Mr. Orbán prepared the model for what he called ‘illiberal democracy’ (or electoral autocracy), emulated by many others including Donald Trump and Narendra Modi. Such regimes create an impression of the Great Leader’s unstoppable popularity and electoral invincibility — or what we may call the ‘aayega to Orbán hi’ effect. This produces apathy: voting is either a display of fealty, or an exercise in futility.

Hungarians have shattered that illusion, and India must take note.

Democratic resilience affirmed

Second, obituaries to modern universal democracy are premature. Realist experts, as well as illiberal leaders and ideologues, tell us that democracy has no universal validity, it is elitist and unpopular with the majority, even in the West, as proved by popular mandates for Brexit, Mr. Trump, Mr. Orbán,and Mr. Modi, and the stability of the Chinese and Russian regimes.

Péter Magyar, who defeated Mr. Orban, is probably as bad on LGBTQIA+ rights as Mr. Orbán and worse on immigration. But the election is not about him. It is about Hungarians affirming, for all of us, that a majority can vote against majoritarianism; that regime change against tyrants is an irrepressible human urge.

Third, a mandate for Ukraine. What is self-evident in Europe might be less so in India; Ukraine won the Hungarian election.

On winning the 2022 elections, Mr. Orbán claimed to have ‘overpowered’ not only his immediate rivals but also Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Going by his party’s 2026 campaign billboards, a visitor could be forgiven for assuming that Mr. Orbán’s rival was Mr. Zelenskyy, not Mr. Magyar. Mr. Orbán asked Hungarian voters, ‘Who should form government: Zelenskyy or me?’

He blamed Hungary’s economic crisis on European Union (EU) aid to Ukraine — a pretext for a ‘peace plan’ that was a wishlist by Russian President Vladimir Putin. It is telling that Hungarian voters rebuffed this notion, despite it being legitimised by some geopolitical and economic pundits.

Instead, Hungarians blamed the wrecked economy on Mr. Orbán’s corrupt cronyism that was inseparable from his position as Mr. Putin’s Praetor in Europe. He used Russian oil profits to bankroll ‘Europe’s richest far-right think tank’, which funnelled funds to parties such as Reform UK.

United States Vice-President J.D. Vance boasts that cutting off aid to Ukraine is ‘one of the proudest’ achievements of the Trump administration. To him, as to much of Europe’s far-right, a Russian victory over Ukraine would be a victory for what Mr. Vance, in his electoral endorsement of Mr. Orbán, called the ‘defence of Western/Christian civilisation and values’.

Like Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu too endorsed Mr. Orbán because he supports the project of folding Europe into a Russia-led Christian white-supremacist Eurasia, away from the ‘evil, globalist’ European Union.

Some of the accusations made

Fourth, regime change accusations are confessions. Mr. Vance accused the EU of “one of the worst examples of foreign election interference”. Mr. Orbán accused Ukraine of funding the opposition party Tisza, just as he has blamed Pride march protests on ‘regime change’ and ‘colonial’ interference by the EU. As is so often the case, the shrillest accusations are often confessions. Not only were Mr. Netanyahu, Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance star campaigners for Mr. Orbán, but he also invited Russian intelligence operatives and experts in online disinformation to run large-scale fake news campaigns. The Russian embassy itself stands accused of running a pro-Orbán influence operation.

Fifth, Mr. Orbán lost power, Chinese President Xi Jinping lost a friend. Mr. Xi personally called Mr. Orbán a friend. In 2024, when he visited Hungary, the police cracked down on Tibetans to prevent any protests. This friendship was not just pragmatic, it was ideological. The founder of a leading media platform in China, Eric Xun Li, writes in an international left-wing journal that while Mr. Trump’s MAGA movement sees China as a rival, it shares China’s view of Ukraine, Europe, and universalist democracy, as do Mr. Putin and Mr. Orbán. He enthuses, “Hungary stands out as the most pro-China government in Europe”, and is also “the country most closely aligned with Russia”.

Mr. Xi has extolled the ‘win-win cooperation’ and ‘all-weather’ partnership between Hungary and China. But Hungarians noticed that the Belt and Road Initiative projects were ‘win-win’ for Mr. Orbán’s childhood friend and Hungary’s richest businessman, Lőrinc Mészáros, and ‘lose-lose’ for Hungary’s economy.

Despite fierce protests by Hungarian students, the Orbán regime went ahead with a project backed personally by Mr. Xi: a campus of Shanghai’s Fudan University in Hungary. Pre-tax construction costs for this campus were “estimated at $1.8 billion, more than the Hungarian government spent on its entire higher-education system in 2019”.

Sustain the momentum

Sixth, it is time to discard the ‘West vs rest’ world map. We are accustomed and thus attached to a West versus rest map of the world. But there is no room on that map for Hungary, which was the battleground to decide if Europe should be a de-democratised outpost for Mr. Trump, Mr. Netanyahu, Mr. Putin and Mr. Xi. Mr. Orbán was the sole European leader with the distinction of flouting International Criminal Court arrest warrants for both Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Putin on genocide charges.

Hungarians defeated not just a national tyrant but also an illiberal international alliance. One hopes that pro-democracy people of the world will unite to do the same.

Hungarians have defeated a national autocrat and challenged a broader illiberal international alliance