Viktor Orban submitted his resignation as the head of Fidesz, but the party did not accept it

Viktor Orban, Hungary's incumbent prime minister, has offered to step down as his party's president after the disastrous parliamentary election result, but the Fidesz leadership has so far rejected the offer, Hungarian news site Telex reported, as reported by Bloomberg.

Orban, who led Fidesz to a crushing defeat two weeks ago, ending the party's 16-year rule, has vowed to relaunch his nationalist movement. However, he decided not to take up his parliamentary mandate for the first time after 1990.

Orban is set to continue as party leader if the Fidesz congress backs him at a meeting scheduled for June, Telex reported, citing Tamás Deutsch, an MEP and longtime Orbán ally.

“Viktor Orban offered to resign as party chairman, but his resignation was not accepted,” Deutsch told reporters.

Concerns among Fidesz members that the party would crumble without him Viktor Orbán

Several senior Fidesz officials said after the election that the party would likely collapse without its longtime leader.

Incoming Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar, a former Fidesz member turned critic, has vowed to dismantle the increasingly authoritarian system built by Orban after winning an overwhelming parliamentary majority on April 12.

Among his promises is limiting prime ministerial terms to two four-year terms, a measure he said would disqualify Orban from returning to head the government.

Orban, 62, has been the dominant figure in Hungarian politics since the transition from communism in 1989, founding Fidesz before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Initially a liberal and vehemently anti-communist, he swung towards a centre-right conservative in his first term as prime minister in 1998, returning to power in 2010 as a radical nationalist.