Emilio Rabasa Gamboa
On April 12, Hungary stunned the world with a spectacular parliamentary election, both for its record-breaking voter turnout (79%) and for the outcome: Viktor Orbán’s authoritarian populism from the Fidesz party was decisively defeated (38%) after 16 years in power (2010–2026) by Péter Magyar of the Tisza party with 54%, and a qualified majority in Parliament of 141 seats to Orbán’s 55.
Magyar’s victory puts an end to the self-styled “illiberal democracy,” a euphemism that masked a populist-authoritarian regime that was corrupt, ineffective, and ultra-centralizing of power. It is a 180-degree turn that restores representative democracy with separation of powers, the rule of law, and freedoms, which the populist parasite had snatched away from them in 2010. Hungary is settling into its European home, triggering a continental geopolitical reconfiguration in which it is transitioning from an illiberal-personalist model to a pluralist-competitive one.
No sooner had Magyar’s victory been announced than Brussels (EU) opened its doors to democratic Hungary, unfreezing the funds it had withheld from Orbán due to corruption and the absence of the rule of law, thereby eliminating the “veto player” role the populist had exercised against support for Ukraine and sanctions on Russia. Europe wins; Russia and Trump lose. The former loses a submissive ally within the EU, and the latter loses that European support for his MAGA project.
If Magyar aims to reestablish parliamentary democracy, he must dismantle the populist virus that Orbán embedded in institutions, judges, and regulators to maintain his grip on power. It must move from “yes, we did” (defeating populism at the polls) to “yes, we can” (rebuilding democracy)—two distinct steps.
In Mexico, however, we remain stuck in “no, we can’t.” President Sheinbaum attended a summit in Barcelona, whose theme and title was “The Defense of Democracy and Freedoms,” delivering a speech centered on our history from Hidalgo and Morelos to Cárdenas, passing through Juárez and the revolutionaries of 1910, which obscured all the anti-democratic dynamics of the 4T, from support for AMLO’s measures that confiscate democracy, and the spurious overrepresentation (54–74%), to its continuation through the rigged elections of the judicial reform, restrictions on freedoms under the amparo system, and even its electoral Plans A and B, which are now being consolidated through an opaque and biased election, via appointments to the General Council of the National Electoral Institute (INE), which clearly favors the ruling party and shows contempt for electoral integrity. By 2027, this ensures a referee completely subservient to the ruling party, to the detriment of fair, independent, transparent, and free elections—that is, DEMOCRATIC ones—which is what the vast majority of Mexicans, the world, and investors expect in Mexico. In colloquial Spanish: “A beacon in the street and darkness in one’s own home.”
I recall a discussion with Lawrence Whitehead (an Oxford professor of Mexican studies) in the 1980s and 1990s, who argued that it was impossible to build a democracy in Mexico without independent, autonomous electoral oversight institutions that would instill confidence in the electorate. When Woldenberg’s IFE was established, he acknowledged he had been wrong. Today, I would agree with him.
That is why, while Hungary showed us that “it is possible” to recover a democracy previously captured and neutered by populism, in Mexico, we are dancing to the rhythm and lyrics of Oswaldo Farrés’s bolero: “Whenever I ask you when, how, and where? You always answer me: Perhaps, maybe, perhaps… And so the days go by, and I’m growing desperate, and you, you reply: Perhaps, maybe, it might be.”
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