About Us Advertise Careers Contact Us Privacy Policy Community Guidelines
Locating… 13°C English WhatsApp Alerts Email Alerts
BREAKING NEWS
Sri Lanka's Nimhara Sasindi Sets Off For 75th Miss Universe Competition In Puerto Rico - NDTV Scientists give hard-to-recycle wind turbine blades a second life - Tech Xplore Inspired by honeycombs, a low-cost cooling structure lasts over 100 million cycles - Tech Xplore ‘No one cares about the little guy’: plastic nurdles still washing ashore in Sri Lanka five years after toxic spill - The Guardian Anthropic is rapidly accelerating AI development amid slowdown calls, outside research group says - Tech Xplore Autonomous microfactory turns digital files into DNA for power-free preservation - Tech Xplore Rechargeable battery prototype runs on vitamin B12 - Tech Xplore Sri Lanka minister says old solar rules made other consumers cover higher nighttime power costs - Yahoo Sri Lanka minister says old solar rules made other consumers cover higher nighttime power costs - The Cool Down Israel's construction industry fights to keep Indian and Sri Lankan workers coming - CTech
SRI LANKA NEWS

Viktor Orbán's Hungarian experiment runs out of steam - BBC

Lanka Hit News • Apr 13, 2026 · 6mo ago • 3 min read
Share:

What Viktor Orbán did for the last 16 years in power was "an experiment" - but even he didn't know what to call it. "Illiberal democracy" sounded too negative.

His American friends liked to call it "national conservatism", which sounds better, but it was never strictly true. Unlike most conservatives, Orbán was a rebel.

He constantly radicalised himself. So what could he conserve?

He loved to thumb his nose at the mainstream, at the "Brussels bureaucrats". He was a thorn in their side, but whenever they hit back, he turned it to his own advantage.

He portrayed himself as an "anti-globalist" but invited German carmakers, and Chinese and South Korean EV battery makers, to Hungary.

He painted himself as the champion of national sovereignty, but refused to stand up for Ukrainian sovereignty against Russia.

He railed against immigration, but quietly encouraged immigration from Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Ukraine and Turkey to build his new factories.

He poured money into encouraging couples to have more children, but by 2025, the fertility rate had fallen back to 1.31 - the same number he inherited from the Socialists in 2010.

The way he swiftly conceded defeat on Sunday night showed him with a strong eye on his image. He acted as a "majoritarian" democrat, meaning that he believed that "the winner takes all" - and that's how he acted in government.

One year after winning a two-thirds majority in 2010, he wrote a new constitution. He reshaped Hungary in his own image to suit his own party.

With his two-thirds majority in parliament he pushed through one law after another, to change the structure of the courts, the electoral system and the economy.

But finally, on Sunday, the Hungarians decisively told him "we don't want to be experimented on any longer".

Péter Magyar defeated him because he carried a Hungarian flag to every rally, because he proclaimed an inclusive, less exclusive national message, and perhaps above all because Hungarians felt exhausted by being constantly in conflict.

And they disliked the way the rich got richer, the poor got poorer, and the middle classes shrank.

Orbán often won his fights, but his people wanted peace and quiet. A normal country, but one with a voice.

That is what Magyar is promising. "Tonight we celebrate," he told the huge crowds, dancing on the shores of the Danube.

Critics say the move comes too late, that the files themselves are incomplete, and the move risks sowing division and causing unnecessary anguish.

Dozens of cases are reported in Austria, Germany and Hungary, including a nine-year-old girl hurting her tongue while eating chocolate containing a pin.

Defeat for Serbia's Aleksandar Vučiċ in last weekend's vote was a carbon copy of Viktor Orbán's fall in Hungary.

LGBTQ and human rights activists warmly welcomed the move, but call for changes to other Orbán-era laws.

Robert Lewandowski, 38, scores a hat-trick in the Nations League and Edin Dzeko plays his final game for Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Copyright 2026 BBC. All rights reserved. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking.

Join the Conversation