Orbán cornered?

What makes it interesting is that this time Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orbán may lose. The election is due on April 12, and for months now his Fidesz Party has trailed the opposition Tisza Party by a wide margin—generally around 10 per cent. The real cause of his problems is a stagnant economy, but he can’t fix that and he has started to panic.

Hungary Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, pictured in 2014. Orbán was prime minister by 1998, passing as a liberal democrat. However, he lost the 2002 election and spent the next eight years in opposition. It was clearly time to change sides, and when he won the 2010 election, it was as an ultra-nationalist, hard-right, antisemitic populist.Photograph courtesy of Flickr

Opinion

BY GWYNNE DYER

March 25, 2026

LONDON, U.K.—Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has not aged well. When I met him in Budapest two months before the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, he was a typical hyper-ambitious student leader. Anybody who has been to university knows the type: fluent, ruthless, perp...

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