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Challenger: Tisza party leader P\u00e9ter Magyar speaks at the National March demonstration, Budapest, Hungary, 23 October 2025<\/p>\n
Janos Kummer \u00b7 Getty\n<\/p>\n
A \u0160koda saloon drew up outside a cultural centre and, as the man who hopes to replace Viktor Orb\u00e1n as prime minister in April got out, a technician adjusted his lapel mic and gave him the go-ahead for his third one-hour Facebook Live session of the day. It was showtime. Standing in front of a child holding a Hungarian flag and a handful of bystanders, P\u00e9ter Magyar greeted his small welcoming committee, who were handing out fridge magnets and the magazine of his centre-right party, Tisza (Respect and Freedom). Inside, 200 people were waiting to hear Magyar, who claims he can rid the country of the \u2018petty sultan and his system of national corruption\u2019.<\/p>\n
Isaszeg, a town of 11,000 inhabitants about 30km east of Budapest, was among the final stops on an around-Hungary-in-80-days campaign tour scheduled to culminate two days later in the capital. \u2018We\u2019ve gone to the furthest corners of the country, to the remotest villages, places where Orb\u00e1n and no other politician have ever set foot, to ask people what isn\u2019t working, what they need and how we can help \u2026 And I have bad news for the Grand Vizier: the countryside is telling him his time\u2019s up!\u2019 Magyar told his audience. The 44-year-old lawyer left Fidesz, the ruling national-conservative party, in early 2024 after his ex-wife, justice minister Judit Varga, was sacked.<\/p>\n
Hungary\u2019s election will be decided far from the capital. A third of its population of 9.5 million live in one of 2,886 municipalities with fewer than 5,000 inhabitants. These are the places hit hardest by the deindustrialisation of the 1990s, the disappearance of cooperatives and the decline of public services. \u2018Rural areas in the countries of the former Soviet bloc are unquestionably the biggest losers from the major economic and political transformation triggered by regime change,\u2019 said geographer B\u00e1lint Csat\u00e1ri of the University of Szeged.<\/p>\n
The decline of public services and local shops accelerated with the Covid pandemic, rising\u00a0(\u2026)<\/p>\n
Full article:\u00a02\u00a0206\u00a0words.<\/p>\n
\tThis article can be read by subscribers<\/p>\n
Ambre Bruneteau & <\/p>\n
Corentin L\u00e9otard<\/p>\n
\n\t\tAmbre Bruneteau is a PhD candidate in political science at the European Centre for Sociology and Political Science, Paris 1 Panth\u00e9on-Sorbonne; Corentin L\u00e9otard is editor-in-chief of Le Courrier d\u2019Europe Centrale, Budapest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Challenger: Tisza party leader P\u00e9ter Magyar speaks at the National March demonstration, Budapest, Hungary, 23 October 2025 Janos…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":223460,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-223459","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223459\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}