Hungarian Opposition Win Inspires Georgia’s Resistance as Ruling Party Loses Ally

The landslide opposition victory in Hungary in the April 12 parliamentary vote has reverberated in Georgia, offering renewed hope to those resisting the increasingly anti-democratic rule of the Georgian Dream party, which has lost its most influential ally within the EU with the defeat of Viktor Orbán.

The Tisza party, led by Péter Magyar, secured a sweeping victory in what has been described as a “historic” vote with a record turnout, ending the 16-year rule of Orbán, a populist right-wing leader who maintained warm relations with Moscow while receiving direct endorsement from the Trump administration in the United States. Orbán, who led the ruling Fidesz party, conceded defeat later on the same day, news that reached many Georgians gathered around their festive tables as the country marked Orthodox Easter.

“This, too, is a sign of Easter: after death and injustice come life and a bright day,” Salome Zurabishvili, Georgia’s fifth president, wrote on her personal Facebook profile at around midnight, celebrating the results and that “dictators leave one after another.”

Just a day earlier, Georgia’s resistance movement had marked its 500th consecutive day of street protests.

Georgian Dream Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze congratulated Magyar and Tisza on the election victory “on behalf of the Georgian people and the Government of Georgia” in the morning of April 13, while thanking Orbán and his team for “outstanding and steadfast support of Georgia’s national interests and the Georgian people over the years.”

“Georgia and Hungary are bound by a long history of friendship and partnership, which will undoubtedly continue,” Kobakhidze said in a post published on official social media accounts.

Orbán, once an ally of ex-President Mikheil Saakashvili, even visiting Georgia to endorse his United National Movement ahead of the 2012 elections that brought Georgian Dream to power, has, over the past years, emerged as a Georgian Dream’s steadfast supporter as it has taken an increasingly illiberal and anti-Western turn. Budapest has also remained among the few European destinations for the Georgian Dream government’s official trips as international isolation grew following Georgia’s 2024 disputed parliamentary vote.

Hungary was known to use its veto power within the EU to repeatedly block Brussels’ more resolute restrictive measures in response to Tbilisi’s anti-democratic actions.

Kobakhidze last visited Budapest on March 21, a day before the funeral of Georgia’s revered Patriarch Ilia II. He met with Orban and again addressed the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), an annual gathering of conservative politicians from around the world hosted by Hungary.

A group of Georgian Dream lawmakers had also arrived in Hungary to observe the April 12 elections.

New Hope for Georgian Resistance?

Tisza’s win was widely celebrated among Georgian government critics, including opposition parties and figures engaged in the resistance.

“Hungary’s firm and clear stance in the ongoing confrontation with Russia and other enemies of the free world is extremely important for Georgia and for the entire free world,” Opposition Alliance, formed in March and uniting nine Georgian political parties, wrote in a statement. The alliance also appreciated Orban conceding the defeat, saying “the peaceful transfer of power is one of the most important achievements of democratic tradition.”

Orbán’s loss comes as Georgian opposition forces have struggled to come up with unified tactics to resist Georgian Dream’s crackdown. Péter Magyar’s success is now hoped to inspire democratic, pro-Western forces similarly facing the challenge of defeating illiberal rule, as Georgian Dream resorts to arrests of opposition leaders and seeks to ban major opposition parties.

In a post published on April 13, Salome Zurabishvili listed what she said were key conclusions from the developments in Hungary. Those lessons, the fifth president said, included that “nothing saves dictatorship” when “the patience of the public runs out,” and that “no rigging method beats the 80 percent of the population” amid “full mobilization,” and that “propaganda cannot erase memory” when a “choice between Europe and Russia” becomes clear for the people.

But the main example and hope, according to Zurabishvili, is that authoritarianism can be changed through elections. “Elections are meaningless, and we cannot beat electoral fraud – this is also a widespread propaganda lie designed to sow despair,” she said.

Tamar Chergoleishvili of the opposition Federalist party, however, called to draw distinctions between autocrats and dictators when speaking about political change through elections. “Dictators do not lose elections,” she said. “Autocrats do.”

The Federalist Party is among the members of the Opposition Alliance.  The alliance has pledged to work together for “the peaceful dismantling of Bidzina Ivanishvili’s Georgian Dream’s autocratic, criminal regime,” including through achieving “new, free, and fair elections.”

Following the 2024 disputed parliamentary election, Georgian opposition parties have been divided over whether to challenge Georgian Dream’s rule through elections while it remains in power and continues to exert influence over the election administration. The split was most apparent during the 2025 municipal vote, which part of the opposition parties boycotted while two major forces – Lelo/Strong Georgia and ex-Prime Minister Giorgi Gakharia’s For Georgia decided to run.

“The same people who boycotted the local elections and labeled as traitors all of us who said that, through a unified effort, there was a real chance to take back the cities won from the regime back in 2024, are now urging us to take Hungary as an example,” Salome Samadashvili of Lelo/Strong Georgia wrote on April 12 as she reflected on the election results. “No boycott has ever brought any result anywhere, that is the Hungarian experience,” she added.

Other commentators have focused on different weaknesses of the opposition compared to Hungary’s Magyar and Tisza, including the inability of Georgian political forces to conduct grassroots political work. “No political party in our reality has managed to create a practice of organized, mass grassroots work, including no proper use of sustainable mechanisms of digital democracy has taken place in this process,” Tamta Mikeladze of Social Justice Center, a Georgian human rights group, noted.

Different Brussels Politics?

Orbán’s defeat is seen as a blow to Georgian Dream’s rule in another sense: it could mean as a loss of an ally that, along with Robert Fico’s Slovakia, has blocked or pledged to block Brussels’ stricter punitive measures, such as targeted economic sanctions, and even joint statements in response to its undemocratic actions. This has led the EU to limit itself to alternative, less harsh moves like suspending visa-free travel for Georgian diplomatic passport holders, with Brussels repeatedly warning that the suspension may eventually spread to the entire Georgian population.

With the Orbán factor now gone, opponents of Georgian Dream may hope that Slovakia’s opposition will not be strong enough to block European action.

“The collapse of Ivanishvili’s main pillar of support will change the reality,” Lelo’s Samadashvili wrote in a separate post. “Accordingly, there is hope that the suspension of the visa-free regime for Georgian citizens will no longer be on the agenda, as the EU will become more effective in terms of sanctioning Ivanishvili’s regime.”

In a March 31 Wider Europe column, Rikard Jozwiak wrote that a change in the Hungarian government may indeed lead to a reversal of Budapest’s active veto politics on a number of issues, but warned that Slovak or even Czech opposition may persist regarding Georgia.

“… an attempt from 2025 to blacklist leading figures in the ruling Georgian dream party, also shot down by the Hungarians, might be resuscitated with a Tisza government even though other EU member states such as the Czech Republic and Slovakia might take over the veto button at least when it comes to Tbilisi,” Jozwiak wrote.

Also Read:

• 28/04/2025 – The Magyar Playbook: Lessons from Hungary