As the Hungarian election campaign enters the final stretch, polarisation is growing both at home and abroad. A taped telephone call between Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov was leaked to an international consortium of investigative journalists. In the conversation, Szijjarto comes across as a true servant of the Kremlin, appearing eager to carry out whatever the Russian government asks of him. “I am always at your disposal,” Szijjarto said at the end of the conversation, which centres around the EU sanctions affecting the sister of Russian oligarch Usmanov, known as one of Putin’s favourite businessmen. Lavrov asks Szijjarto to remove the sister from the EU sanctions list, which he promises to pursue at the EU level. “We will do our best in order to get her off,” Szijjarto says. Indeed, the woman was delisted seven months after the conversation. Investigative news outlet VSquare also wrote Szijjarto was in regular contact with Russian Energy Minister Pavel Sorokin and informed him about details of high-level EU discussions on upcoming sanction packages. Szijjarto promised to “save as many Russian companies as possible”. The report confirms widespread suspicions that Hungary has been leaking confidential EU information to Russia.
The leaked phone call has had international repercussions. Czech President Petr Pavel urged Prague to reconsider its relations with the Hungarian government, especially when it comes to sharing sensitive information. Polish PM Donald Tusk sniped that, “Hungary is and will be in the European Union. Victor Orban and his foreign minister left Europe long ago.” Szijjarto inevitably lashed out against the unnamed foreign intelligence services that had wiretapped his conversation and then leaked it less than two weeks before the election. “This is foreign interference,” he said on Facebook. The leaked phone call appears to be only the first in a series that could be published before the April 12 election. It also suggests European intelligence services – possibly behind the recordings – are willing to share classified or confidential information with the international and Hungarian media. Szijjarto is one of the three leading politicians heading the Fidesz party’s campaign, alongside PM Viktor Orban and Transport Minister Janos Lazar.
Hopes among the opposition for a landslide Tisza party victory have been dampened somewhat by the release this week of a documentary, The Price of a Vote, that appears to confirm longstanding suspicions about the governing Fidesz party putting pressure on people living in poverty and engaging in vote-buying before elections – offering firewood, potatoes, hard cash, or even drugs and alcohol. “I have distributed chicken to these people all night before elections,” admits a man who used to work for Fidesz. “We literally bought them.” The people interviewed, predominantly Roma, live from public works and on social transfers. “[The price of my vote] started at a thousand [forints], then 5,000, then 10,000 – that’s one day of food,” one young man says in the film. Vote-buying schemes involve not only incentives but also threats. Some interviewees said they were warned they could lose their public work opportunities, often the only source of income in some of the poorest rural areas. Others claimed they feared that if they did not vote for Fidesz, the local doctor – who is also the mayor and is married to the Fidesz candidate – would refuse to write prescriptions. In a particularly moving scene, a mother recounted how she was intimidated and threatened that her children would be taken away by local child welfare services because a family member openly opposed the local Fidesz candidate. Similar vote-buying practices have reportedly been identified in roughly half of Hungary’s individual constituencies. The filmmakers estimate that as much as 8 billion forints (about 21 million euros) would be distributed in the final week before the April 12 election. The film was, unsurprisingly, dismissed by the government as opposition propaganda. But those critical of the government say the film highlights feudal dependencies and even mafia-style structures in rural communities in Hungary – a system that would be very difficult to dismantle even in the event of a Tisza victory.