Outgoing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has announced he will not take his seat in parliament following a landslide election loss earlier this month, instead focusing on rebuilding his nationalist-populist political movement. In a video posted on social media on Saturday, Orbán said his Fidesz party’s parliamentary caucus would be “radically transformed” and that his task now lay in the “reorganization” of the “national side” he has led for nearly four decades.
Hungary’s April 12 election ended Orbán’s 16-year grip on power after voters overwhelmingly backed a centre-right challenger, Péter Magyar, whose Tisza party won a two-thirds majority in parliament. Magyar has promised to crack down on endemic corruption and restore democratic institutions eroded under Orbán’s rule. The incoming prime minister’s victory gives him 141 of 199 seats, the largest majority in Hungary’s post-Communist history, while Fidesz will hold just 52, down from 135 before the election.
Since the vote, uncertainty had surrounded Orbán’s future role in Hungarian political life. In his statement, he suggested he would remain president of his Fidesz party when its congress convenes in June to elect a leader. “Our task now is not in parliament,” Orbán said, but in the rebuilding of his political camp, which he described as “the most united and cohesive political community in Hungary.”
When the new parliament convenes on May 9, it will be the first time since Hungary’s transition from state socialism in 1990 that Orbán has not held a seat among lawmakers. Magyar has vowed to hold accountable those responsible for overseeing and benefiting from widespread official corruption under Orbán’s administration, and to restore the rule of law.
