Letters, posters and promises: campaigns targeting foreigners in Hungary amid the elections

The European Parliament elections and municipal elections will take place on the same day this year in Hungary, on 9 June. Both campaigns are now in their final weeks, and the candidates are increasingly trying to mobilise their voter base and convince the undecided. Foreign citizens with a Hungarian address can also vote in local government elections, and campaigns try to convince them with various methods.

About 137,000 non-Hungarian EU citizens residing in Hungary, and 35,000 refugees and long-term residents can vote in the municipal elections on 9 June, as Index reported, and there have been several examples in recent weeks of the candidates trying to earn their votes as well.

Letter for Chinese citizens as part of the campaign?

According to the official data of the 2022 census, there are 98,319 foreign citizens living in Budapest, and roughly 15 percent of them are Chinese citizens. Thus, it is not a coincidence that they are the ones whose trust the candidates want to earn the most.

The Fidesz-KDNP coalition party seemingly didn’t want to leave it to chance and took the opportunity to introduce themselves in a letter. As Telex writes, a few days ago, a letter written in Chinese was published, which included, among other things, a photo of the party’s mayoral candidate, Alexandra Szentkirályi, as well as a ballot form filled out as a guide, on which the votes supporting Fidesz were marked with an X in advance.

In the first half of the letter, after a short introduction, Alexandra Szentkirályi talks about how Xi Jinping made a “historic” visit to the country not so long ago, and that friendship with the Chinese people has always been of special importance to Hungarians. She adds that since Fidesz has been the ruling party in Hungary, relations between the two countries have been improving continuously.

The ruling party has always welcomed Chinese friends and businessmen who come to the country, and this will continue to be important to Fidesz in the future. According to the mayoral candidate, citizens will be protected from criminals, public places will be kept clean, and the renovation of residential buildings will be supported.

Posters in the city of Debrecen

RTL previously reported that there were posters in Chinese that looked like they belonged to the Fidesz party in Debrecen. They show a photo of the mayor of Debrecen, László Papp, with Chinese characters written below. The posters were also discussed on a Reddit forum, where users wrote that traditional Taiwanese characters can be seen on them, which – given the current Sino-Hungarian relations – would be a brave stance on the part of Fidesz. However, the origin and purpose of the posters are still unknown.

Foreign candidates in Hungary

Interestingly, there are several Hungarian settlements where, based on the large percentage of foreigners, a foreign mayor may be elected. For example, 70 percent of Rajka citizens are Slovakians, as well as 25 percent of Dunakiliti and Bezenye, G7 reports. Thus, the village may elect a Slovakian mayor in the 9 June municipal elections. Rajka’s case is considered exceptional, but not entirely unique: as said earlier, a quarter of Dunakiliti and Bezenye are already foreign citizens, a tenth of Hegyeshalom and Dunasziget, but even in the much larger town of Mosonmagyaróvár, 4.5 percent of the population are not Hungarian citizens.

There are politicians in Hungary who have non-Hungarian ancestors too. One of the eleven candidates of the European Parliamentary elections, Marietta Le is of Vietnamese origin, as her father is from said country. Even though her Vietnamese heritage is really important to her, as she told HVG, the Hungarian Two-Tailed Dog Party’s campaign, which she is the list leader of, does not extend to persuading foreigners, they rather believe in the power of communities. She was the founder of jarokelo.hu, which is a platform where people can report problems with pedestrian crossings, missing trash cans, and potholes, and thus they can participate in shaping their local environment.

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