As the legislative elections on April 12 in Hungary approach, Peter Magyar’s supporters in Jaszfenyszaru, in the center of the country, want to believe in the victory of their champion against the nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán who is omnipresent in the media.
An unimaginable scene just a few months ago in this town of 6,000 inhabitants where Fidesz, the nationalist prime minister’s party, has reigned supreme for 16 years, activists from the opposition Tisza party are holding stands.
“Tisza is surging,” says a cyclist as he passes in front of them, in a play on words with the river of the same name which runs through the country from north to south.
Krisztina Menczel confides that this is the first time she got involved in politics, and that she was seduced by the charisma and arguments of Peter Magyar, who resurrected the movement in 2024 and came to Jaszfenyszaru in August, as part of a national tour.
Since then, this 41-year-old beautician has spent three hours a day broadcasting her program, while managing social networks locally.
“These stands have a big impact, even those who would never dare reveal their political preferences agree to talk to us,†she says.
A man in the inner circle, Peter Magyar, 45, took the reins of the opposition after criticizing the Orbán system at the start of 2024, in the wake of a resounding scandal involving a pardon granted in a child crime case. Since then, he has continued to denounce the corruption of power and the abandonment of public services.
This scandal constituted a “tipping point” for Hungarians already unhappy with the economic situation, many “understood that they had had enough of the Orbán system”, according to Zoltan Lakner, editor-in-chief of the weekly Jelen.
While Fidesz has plastered the country with giant campaign signs, Tisza is asking his supporters to hang posters on their homes and storefronts.
And instead of creating traditional offices, Peter Magyar relies on an associative network, called “Tisza islands” responsible for running his campaign.
“Revolution of entrepreneurs”
A strategy which is producing its fruits even at the very heart of Viktor Orbán’s rural, elderly and poorly educated electoral base.
With its 4,000 “Tisza plots”, the opposition is irrigating land that the opposition had abandoned.
They first organized local community events – charity fundraisers, barbecues, political debates to recreate connections – before moving on to full-time campaigning.
The key to the success of these events was the involvement of small and medium-sized business owners, according to Mr. Lakner, who describes the movement as an “entrepreneurs’ revolution.” Because they “are the backbone of these associations”. They put their know-how at the service of the project in an approach that was “pragmatic before being ideological”, with the main aim of “finding a country that works”, according to him.
It is from this pool of locally respected professionals that Tisza’s legislative candidates were chosen during a primary organized in November.
“This gives them credibility, given the deep disenchantment with career politicians,” Bulcsu Zsiga, a researcher at the Center for Fair Political Analysis think tank, told AFP, drawing a parallel with the recruitment process of the En Marche movement. of French President Emmanuel Macron.
But their political inexperience carries a “danger” that Tisza “clearly seeks to mitigate,” warns the expert, citing the party’s much-criticized attitude of restricting media access to its candidates.
In the Hungarian countryside, activism can come at a high price. Krisztina Menczel has paid the price: a close relative of the local Fidesz MP has stopped frequenting her salon since she became an activist.
A trader, Eszter Somfai, saw her address published online after the leak in November of an internal party database, which affected some 200,000 supporters.
“But we are not going to let ourselves be intimidated,†Krisztina Menczel told AFP, adding that she had “the feeling that here, people are opening up more and more. If everything goes fairly, then we will be victorious. HAS”
