Péter Magyar announces his party

"We submitted our party's registration application to the National Election Committee a few minutes ago," Péter Magyar wrote in a Facebook post on Wednesday. At the time, he did not reveal the name of the party, saying he would only make it public after its registration had been confirmed by the authorities.

However, soon afterwards, the application was published on the website of the National Election Office (NVI), as Hvg.hu noticed. According to this information:

Magyar would stand for the TISZA Party – (Tisztelet és Szabadság i.e. Respect and Freedom) in the EP and municipal elections on 9 June.

The ex-husband of former Justice Minister Judit Varga burst onto the political scene in Hungary in the wake of the clemency scandal in early February, which resulted in the resignation of President Katalin Novák, and his ex-wife from her post as MP and leader of Fidesz’ EP list in the upcoming elections. The former Fidesz insider Magyar has since publicly criticized the government, has published a secretly recorded conversation between him and his ex-wife, alleging corruption in the government’s highest echelons, and has organized anti-government protests attended by tens of thousands of people.

The symbol of the Talpra Magyarok! Community, which Magyar announced on 15 March has already been added to the party’s logo.

After we also reported on this, Magyar officially confirmed that the Community of Talpra Magyarok intends to run in the June 9 elections under the banner of the Party of Respect and Freedom (TISZA). "The party elected me as one of its vice-presidents at its general assembly today, and we have gained a majority in the party's decision-making bodies," he wrote on his Facebook page.

He claims that there is an administrative rationale for his becoming only vice-president of the party and not president. The court would probably not have registered the change of leadership in time and they did not want to risk missing out on the EP elections.

The TISZA party was registered by the court in Eger a year before the 2022 parliamentary elections with Attila Szabó as its chairman. Speaking to the local news outlet, Egri Ügyek in 2021, he said they would be standing candidates in all 106 districts and their goal was to get into parliament. Although they even travelled around the country in 2021 to recruit supporters, this did not bring about the desired results – they weren’t even able to nominate a candidate in Eger.

"We are not power-hungry, we do not need high state pay, and we deeply believe in genuinely representing the people," he said in the interview. He also said that the party would neither seek nor accept any funding from the state budget, and that it would support itself through membership fees and donations of no more than 10,000 forints. According to the party's latest report, in 2022 they had a total income of 222,000 forints.

The party's vice-president is Boldizsár Deák, who has previously been a Fidesz municipal councillor in Eger, and at one time owned Rádió Eger and was also a board member of the Eger Water Polo Club. In the above mentioned 2021 interview, he said that it was completely out of question for the TISZA party to ever cooperate with the opposition.

“As a centre-right party free of ideology, we are pursuing a middle-of-the-road policy anyway.”

Attila Szabó also confirmed that their party is neither right-wing nor left-wing. In 2021 the party's programme was a combination of modern European conservative and social democratic values. “In our view, a decent citizen is self-sustaining and does not want to live on benefits, but on a decent European income. Our party wants a Hungary that is competitive both in knowledge and technology.”

Since only parties that were legally registered by the court before the elections were called on 12 March can be registered by the electoral commission as nominating organizations, Péter Magyar did not have time to found a new party ahead of the 9 June EP elections.

He is set to be leading the party's EP list, while they called for applications for several positions on Tuesday. "In the framework of the tender, we would like to select five gentlemen and five ladies in an open and transparent way who, based on their education and experience, are suitable and feel qualified to enter public life and represent Hungary and their fellow citizens as MEPs," the tender notice reads, adding that the selection will be a multi-stage process, including a personal interview, a video introduction and a countrywide vote as well.

The National Electoral Commission is expected to decide at its meeting on Thursday afternoon whether to accept TISZA's application. "Let's see how scared the authorities are and whether they will try to prevent our candidacy by administrative means," Magyar remarked.