This bodes well for the midterm state of the European union.
Hopefully the damage Orban caused to Hugarian institutions get reversed.
Unfortunatlely, half democracies (ie representative) are open to abuse and give too much power to presidents or governments. Combined with populism, lobbying and corruption, it allows people like Orban to stay in power for a long time. Glad it's over.
Any reason not to be so cynical? I am unfamiliar with the details of Hungarian politics, but I can’t help wondering if it is staged. And why would Orbán just roll over after all this time in power?
What can they realistically do? Invade Hungary?
> And why would Orbán just roll over after all this time in power?
What can he realistically do? A coup? With such a devastating defeat this would only lead to massive protests, which would completely ruin his political career. Meanwhile he can take a step back and think how to get back to the game in the next election.
As bad as Orban was, and as manipulated the election process was, he always won using legit votes. Which was both his strength and his weakness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GUoCvIMrgc
They must be really tired of winning by now.
What? 4$ gas until November Mr.President? Who doesn’t love paying 30% more for Gas out of their pocket for a war that is already won. Tremendous work Mr. President. A capital V victory.
...we know.
(I listen Ukraine: The Latest daily, I'm reasonably up-to-date big issue European politics).
Here is an example of HN moderation going the other way, when it favored a right-leaning narrative:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34712496
It is getting more and more difficult for me to see moderation here as unbiased. The charitable take is that people are often not aware of their biases. I am sure I suffer from that to some extent, though I really try to go out of my way to be self-aware about this. And yes, of course this comment could be evidence of my own bias.
The 'vouch' option doesn't appear until/unless the post becomes [dead].
JD Vance strikes again. I wonder how long it will take US politicians and assorted billionaires to realize that their 'endorsements' will backfire.
Obvious tweaks exist, of course: Even if you keep more individual constituencies than party list seats, they should use some sort of instant runoff/ranked choice/etc. system. But other first past the post countries are dragging their feet on this too, so... we'll see.
We should approach democracy more with the kind of insight that go into making computers secure. Oh, wait...
For both: I prefer to see it all rather than to assume it will be fine. Oh, and we still have Fico to deal with. But at least Hungarians have chosen against Orban that in itself gives some hope. Those leaked phone calls that were made public in the last weeks were very damning, I always assumed that such stuff was going on but to have hard proof is on another level.
I wonder what they're going to do with the participants. And what Orban's plans are now that he's in the opposition. I would not count him out just yet, he's got Putin's backing and you can bet they'll work overtime to try to destabilize Magyar's government. The rot goes pretty deep and it will take a lot of work to undo all that damage.
But Orban will hang around, if only to do more of Putin's bidding, it's up to Magyar & the new government now to deal with Orban and his spies in a way that they won't be able to do a come-back.
-- Peter Magyar victory speech, April 12, 2026
That's directly in opposition to Orban's views and homophobic laws.
Strength to you, it must be super hard to be living under politicians that are ripping off your country in such a blatant manner on behalf of what is nominally now an enemy nation (based on their own statements), especially given what your country had to endure in the years before the fall of the USSR.
Luckily I don't think Fico will help Putin that much because nobody trusts him anymore, his foreign minister is very weak and as you mention Slovakia is no economical heavyweight. The hardest thing for us is to see the brainwashed masses still voting for Fico or worse still actual nazis.