Peter Magyar, the Eliza Doolittle of Hungary

Iizarre as it may seem, the news of Viktor Orban’s shattering defeat in last Sunday's elections in Hungary made me think of Zoltan Karpathy.

- Karan Thapar

Now, who is Karpathy, you might well ask? In My Fair Lady, he's described as “that dreadful Hungarian”. Honestly, isn’t that a term one could use for Viktor Orban?

Inthe film, Karpathy “made it the devilish business of his” to expose Eliza Doolittle, a flower girl pretending to be an aristocrat, on her debut at the Embassy Ball. And he got it terribly wrong. Peter Magyar, you could argue, is a bit like Miss Doolittle. He has captured the imagination of the Hungarian people. He came seemingly from nowhere to take by storm the citadel of Hungarian politics.

Let me first tell you about the results before I return to Karpathy and My Fair Lady. With a turnout of nearly 80%, Peter Magyar's Tisza Party won 53% of the vote and 138 seats out of 199. That's more than atwo-thirds majority. Orban's Fidesz was reduced to just 55 seats and 38% of the vote. The relatively unknown outsider won all the laurels.

That is also the story of My Fair Lady. Eliza Doolittle, whose cockney accent betrays her actual lower-class origins, transforms into a sophisticated lady that you could easily mistake for a princess. Zoltan Karpathy does just that.