Exemplary Democracy

During the first decade of my life, I was harangued with propaganda at elementary school about how wonderful Hungary, my homeland, was, to the point that, by 1944, I was bursting with patriotic pride about being a Magyar.

Then, on March 19, 1944, the Germans invaded Hungary, and we had to leave my beloved country. My family split up almost overnight and we all became Stateless Aliens, sans patrie ni famille, forced to wander from country to country, begging for permission to reside temporarily – very temporarily – because we had been Hungarians and Hungary had been an ally of Germany and had committed atrocities during World War Two.

We settled in Canada a decade later, but the stigma remained: Kadar’s Gulyas Communism was not something to be proud of either.

Half a century went by.

And then, at the Hungarian General Election held on Sunday, April 12, 2026, Peter Magyar’s TISZA party defeated Viktor Orbán’s FIDESZ party, thus ending the sixteen-year reign of the Trump and Putin-loving despot.

Peter Magyar was initially part of FIDESZ, but he quit in 2024 because he could not tolerate the corruption of the Orbán government. (Hungary is consistently ranked to be the most corrupt member of the EU).

Magyar had formed his own party, TISZA, in the Spring of 2024 and immediately went to work to defeat Orbán. His election campaign was based not solely on trying to convert FIDESZ supporters into TISZA voters, but to find NEW voters.

And he knew where to look for them – certainly NOT in Budapest but in the neglected poverty-ridden countryside. So, he visited over SEVEN HUNDRED small towns and villages, walking several hundred kilometres, stopping to speak publicly and to ANSWER QUESTIONS in every one of them! He engaged the frustrated young people – those who saw no future in a country that had been “oppressed with corruption” by a despot during the last sixteen years.

It is the overwhelming number of first-time young voters who won this revolution.

Magyar’s victory was swift and so decisive (TISZA won 141 out of the 199 Parliamentary seats, more than two-thirds) that Orbán was forced to concede which he graciously did do before midnight. on voting day.

Then, within two weeks, Orbán resigned his parliamentary seat.

Meanwhile, Orbán’s cohorts (a number of them immediately left the country) tried to take advantage of the government inter regnum and started shifting some of the corrupt money accumulated in Hungary to countries that had no reciprocal extradition agreements with Hungary. (United Arab Emirates, Oman, Uruguay, Saudi Arabia, Singapore etc…)

Peter Magyar is well aware of these machinations and has addressed the nation about them within a week of the election. He warned that his government intends to start investigating any and all corrupt activity of the previous government immediately upon his coming to power in an effort to bring to justice in a timely manner anyone found guilty of such activity.

Magyar seems to mean business. He has already named the members of his cabinet. He knows that he has to hurry because he needs money from the EU in Brussels. That will happen only if he has his Justice Department functioning and his government busy at canceling the oppressive laws that had been created by Viktor Orbán during the last sixteen years.

With its new two-third parliamentary majority TISZA should be able to pass laws to restore democratic checks and balances thereby demonstrating to the world, that with very hard work and highly efficient organization, it IS possible to overthrow malevolent dictators.

…and allow me to be proud to be Hungarian again at the age of 91.

* * *

To give you an idea of how large and prevailing corruption has been in Hungary under FIDESZ rule let me tell you about a man called Lörinc Mészaros.

Mészaros and Orbán were both brought up in the small village of Felcsút and they became close childhood friends.

Mésszáros founded a gas technician company and Orbán became a politician.

When Orbán’s party, FIDESZ, came to power in 2010 Orbán saw to it that the company of his old friend Mészáros was continuously awarded substantial government contracts without having to tender for them. This arrangement enabled Mészáros to keep acquiring assets to the point where, today, his empire is estimated to be worth FOUR BILLION CANADIAN DOLLARS.