New Delhi, April 16 -- Hungarian opposition leader and election winner Peter Magyar said Wednesday that the country's president had assured him in a meeting that his new government could take power in the first week of May, an accelerated timeline for the end of Prime Minister Viktor Orban's 16-year reign.

Following Magyar and his center-right Tisza party's landslide victory in Sunday's election in which it won a two-thirds parliamentary majority, the opposition leader has pushed for the transfer of power to occur as quickly as possible. Under Hungarian law, the inaugural session of the new parliament, which must elect a new prime minister, must occur no later than May 12.

Following a private consultation with President Tamas Sulyok on ...