A film quoting voters, mayors and a police officer alleges money and drugs are being offered to pressure people to back the ruling party.

The Price of the Vote documentary film, which aired on Thursday evening at a Budapest cinema and on YouTube, presents the results of a six-month investigation by independent filmmakers and reporters.

In the film, voters, mayors, former election officials and a police officer claim that large sums of money and even illegal drugs are being offered to pressure people to vote for Fidesz.

Fifty-three of Hungary’s 106 individual constituencies and up to 600,000 voters are targeted, the film alleges – potentially 10% of the expected turnout of six million.

“In the beginning, we thought the key piece of this process is vote-buying. But then we realised that the money is just the icing on the cake. The key word here is dependency and vulnerability,” Aron Timar, one of the filmmakers, told the BBC.

“The money comes in on a pretty serious scale, and with quite a large entourage,” says one interviewee, a serving police officer whose face and voice is disguised, in the documentary.

“I didn’t become a police officer to serve a corrupt system. To help cover things up.”

In one village, the Fidesz mayor is also the district doctor for a catchment area covering 32 settlements. Patients say they fear they will not receive their prescription if they do not vote for the party.

Firewood is only distributed to those who vote for the party, several people interviewed claim.

In another, a former candidate dropped his bid for elected office, after the child protection office allegedly threatened to take his children into care.

The authorities did not want him running against the candidate preferred by the governing Fidesz party, he claims.

  • lennybirdEnglish
    28·
    6 days ago

    Remember, there is a triangular relationship with Republicans, Orban, and Putin going back many years.

    Hungary has been used as a proving ground for democratic erosion as implemented by Russia and now being implemented in the USA.

    Watch closely because what we see there will be tried here in November midterms and in 2028.

    • kopasz7@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
      8·
      6 days ago

      Then I am very hopeful, because what’s happening here from Orban’s ruling party has been very contra-productive lately. The polling also shows a decisive lead in favor of the opposition party, Tisza. (58% vs 35%)

      Here is a translated satirical summary from r/hungary of how absurd things are in the official communication (and there are still two weeks!):

      After summarizing the information provided by Gergely Gulyás over the past few weeks, the situation has now become completely clear to me.

      The fact is that the Ukrainians support Tisza, so Ukrainians have infiltrated Tisza to leak information about it, thereby weakening Tisza. But other Ukrainians are infiltrating these Ukrainian infiltration groups to prevent the leaks. However, yet other Ukrainians are monitoring them to expose the Ukrainians who are preventing the leaks. Meanwhile, the Hungarian secret service exposes the Ukrainians, but the Ukrainians leak this information through an investigative journalist working for them three years before the Tisza was founded, which Ukrainians again refute, and then Ukrainians also confirm it even in the past.

      Meanwhile, the Ukrainians want Tisza to win, but the Ukrainians also want Tisza to lose, so the Ukrainians are campaigning for Tisza, while Zelenskyy is campaigning against Tisza, which other Ukrainians are coordinating so that the Ukrainians don’t know what the Ukrainians are doing.

      Meanwhile, the Ukrainians secretly want to attack Orbán to boost Fidesz’s support, and everyone knows about this because the Ukrainians leaked it so that the Ukrainians wouldn’t remain in the dark. Meanwhile, within the Tisza, the Ukrainians want to destroy the Tisza, which the Ukrainians are trying to defend from the Ukrainians, while within the Tisza, the Ukrainians are investigating who the Ukrainians are. So, here’s where we stand: the Ukrainians are supporting the Tisza, the Ukrainians are sabotaging the Tisza, the Ukrainians are monitoring the Ukrainians, the Ukrainians are exposing the Ukrainians, the Ukrainians are misleading the Ukrainians, the Ukrainians are controlling the Ukrainians, and the Ukrainians are trying to figure out who the Ukrainians are.

      In short: the Ukrainians are fighting against the Ukrainians as part of a complex, multi-pronged intelligence operation to determine what the Ukrainians ultimately want.

      It’s perfectly clear.

      The only question now is when the Russians who support Fidesz, who are, of course, also Ukrainians, will appear in this story.