India, April 13 -- When American far-Right ideologue and former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon called Hungary's Viktor Orban "Trump before Trump", it was to evoke Orban's success in drawing popular support as a deeply conservative, authoritarian leader of a European nation. That popular support ran out on Sunday, after 16 years in office. Orban's party, Fidesz, suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of the centre-Right Tisza - despite the regime redrawing constituencies to favour Fidesz, changing election laws to make electoral competition difficult for opposition parties, clamping down on independent media, and appointing allies to key posts and making it procedurally harder to remove them.

The electorate's disenchantment had become...