The Hungarian opposition’s decisive victory over Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s ruling Fidesz Party has been greeted with relief across the democratic world.

Armed with a constitutional majority, the center-right Tisza Party and its leader, Peter Magyar, are now poised to dismantle Orban’s 16-year grip on state institutions. What will be harder, however, is confronting the public demand for illiberal rule that sustained it.

Tisza’s success shows that even a highly entrenched regime can be defeated at the polls, despite institutional capture, media dominance and electoral engineering. This matters because Orban’s Hungary has long been more than a national story. It provided proof of concept for the global new right, demonstrating that a politics opposed to human rights and equality is viable in the West.

© The Japan Times