Hungary’s veteran nationalist leader Viktor Orban lost power to the upstart centre-right Tisza party in Sunday’s national election after 16 years in office, marking a setback for his allies in Russia and US President Donald Trump’s White House.
Orban, 62, was celebrated by conservatives across Europe and the United States as the mastermind of the “illiberal” model of democracy, but lost favour at home with voters who grew weary of economic stagnation, international isolation and oligarchs amassing wealth.
His landslide defeat handed Tisza’s Peter Magyar, 45, a comfortable majority in Hungary’s 199-seat legislature, opening the door for meaningful reforms of a system critics in the European Union said subverted democratic norms.