'Regime change': Hungary's Magyar exposes Orban's decadence

The lavish lifestyles of autocrats and dictators are often only exposed after their downfall. The cases of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych serve as particularly striking examples. Footage of Ceausescu's extravagantly gold-plated bathroom has etched itself in Romania's collective memory.

Now, Hungary's ousted leader Viktor Orban and his allies are also having their decadence exposed. On Monday, Prime Minister Peter Magyar published videos from Orban's official Buda Castle residence and two ministries, revealing gigantic, luxuriously furnished rooms throughout.

But that's not all. Orban, who likes to talk about how he grew up in a village and his humble  roots, had decorated his official residence with almost 100 valuable paintings from the Hungarian National Gallery. While touring the residence, Prime Minister Magyar said it reminded him the Ceausescu era.

One of these revelatory videos has garnered as many as eight million views in a single day — no small feat given that Hungary's population is just under ten million.

Shining a light on the opulence of Oban and his elite as Hungary falls into disrepair may strike some outside observers as a populist move by the successor government. Yet for many Hungarians, watching this footage has trigged not only anger, but a sense a satisfaction in seeing the former elite exposed.

It is likely Hungary's new leader Peter Magyar will continue charting a new political course. At his swearing-in ceremony in the Hungarian parliament on Saturday, Magyar left no doubt he wants to see far-reaching systemic change, saying that reconciling divided Hungarian society was his top priority.

This will require achieving justice, the prime minister said, which cannot be done without exposing and reckoning with the Orban system in both a moral and legal sense.

A symbolic day

Magyar had declared said Saturday "regime change day," with Hungarian journalists once again allowed to freely report from parliament — a prerogative largely scrapped under Orban's rule.

As her first official act, the new parliamentary president Agnes Forsthoffer ordered the EU flag to be raised again on the building, 12 years after it was removed. In another first, Hungary's unofficial Roma anthem was played during a parliamentary session by an ensemble of Roma and non-Roma children.

Peter Magyar's inaugural speech became a blistering reckoning with the previous government — one unlike anything heard in the Hungarian parliament, not even in 1990. Ousted leader Orban did not find the courage to attend parliament, even though it is customary for the outgoing and incoming heads of government to shake hands there.

Later that day, well-known Roma pop singer Ibolya Olah sang the melancholic and patriotic song "There is a country, Hungary" on Parliament Square. She had not sung it in many years because Hungarian nationalists denied her the right to sing it as a Romni and threatened her at concerts.

On Saturday, however, thousands of people streamed into a once cordoned-off section of Parliament Square to hear Olah sing in one of the most moving and symbolic moments of the day.

Cabinet of experts

On Monday and Tuesday, things continued apace with the announcement and swearing-in of cabinet ministers, thereby completing the formal transfer of power after 16 years of Orban rule in just one month.

As is also new in Hungary, the cabinet consists almost exclusively of renowned experts in their respective fields, who have had little or nothing to do with politics so far. Former diplomat and energy expert Anita Orban now serves as the country's foreign minister, while a former oil company manager is in charge of the economics ministry, with an orthopedic surgeon to serve as health minister. Leading lawyers as well as finance, education and IT specialists have also joined the cabinet.

Parts of the new government's agenda were already known, such plans to create an independent anti-corruption authority and an office for the recovery of illegally acquired assets. Magyar and his minister Balint Ruff have now announced one of the most comprehensive investigations into government spending ever conducted in Hungary. Moreover, in the fall, authorities are set to publish a list of names of former Hungarian state security agents — a project that has been repeatedly delayed for the past 30 years.

None of these announcements would raise an eyebrow in any other EU state and simply count as usual democratic practice. But in post-Orban Hungary, creating a more independent judiciary, fostering government dialog with civil society and the media, setting up a fair, transparent electoral system, restoring universities' autonomy, and launching a broad debate on gender equality, abortion and gay marriage sounds almost revolutionary.

Magyar held his first government meeting in the southern village of Opusztaszer, where the Hungarian nomadic tribes are said to have pitched their tents in 896 — the prelude to the later founding of the Hungarian state. Today, the area is affected by severe drought, a topic which will be discussed at the inaugural cabinet meeting.

Overall, Magyar has set himself and his government higher standards than any other Hungarian prime minister since 1990. One of the first tests will be how his announced drastic pay cut will play out. For context: ousted Prime Minster Orban earned the highest salary of all European leaders relative to the nation's average wage.

This article was translated from German.