The government of Viktor Orbán's Fidesz party in Hungary is accused of widespread voter intimidation in a film released on Thursday ahead of the April 12 parliamentary elections, in which the ruling party is trailing in opinion polls, UNN reports, citing the BBC.
Details
The documentary "The Price of a Vote," screened Thursday evening at a Budapest cinema and on YouTube, presents the results of a six-month investigation by independent filmmakers and journalists.
In the film, voters, mayors, former election commission employees, and a police officer claim that people are offered large sums of money and even drugs to force them to vote for Fidesz.
The film claims that the target is 53 of Hungary's 106 electoral districts and up to 600,000 voters – potentially 10% of the expected turnout of six million people.
After 16 years of Fidesz rule under Orbán, recent polls show the party trailing Péter Magyar's center-right opposition party Tisza by at least the same margin.
All involved constituencies are rural or small towns, where Fidesz has increasingly dominated since 2010.
The film depicts rural Hungary as consisting of many poor villages, home to, among others, the country's numerous Roma minority.
According to claims in the film, local mayors tightly control daily life, providing jobs, firewood, transportation to polling stations, and, in one case, even access to medicine in exchange for a "correct" vote on election day.
The BBC contacted individual government ministers, as well as the press services of the government, the Ministry of Interior, and the Hungarian National Police for comment.
So far, the only response has come from Minister of Public Administration and Regional Development Tibor Navracsics, who is considered a moderate politician.
"If there are any irregularities, let the Ministry of Interior do its job," Navracsics replied. He declined to comment on specific claims in the film.
Addendum
In January, Viktor Orbán addressed a large gathering of mayors and members of rural and urban councils in Budapest: "Mayors, ladies and gentlemen, the situation is this: these elections must be won by you."
"The 2026 elections will be decided by your participation. If you participate, we will win; if not, then not."
In the film, Orbán's words are juxtaposed with interviews of approximately 20 figures from 14 of Hungary's 19 counties, from the south to the northeast.
The scale of this practice and the similarity of stories from villages located tens or hundreds of kilometers apart led the filmmakers to conclude that this action was planned by high-ranking Fidesz officials.
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"Initially, we thought that voter bribery was the key element of this process. But then we realized that money is just the icing on the cake. The keyword here is dependence and vulnerability," Áron Timár, one of the film's creators, told the BBC.
"Money comes in quite serious amounts and with quite a large entourage," says one of the interviewees, a serving police officer whose identity and voice are disguised in the documentary.
"I didn't become a police officer to serve a corrupt system. To help hide the truth."
In one village, the Fidesz mayor is also the district doctor in an area covering 32 settlements. Patients say they fear not getting a prescription if they don't vote for the party.
Several interviewees claim that firewood is only distributed to those who vote for the party.
In another case, a former candidate withdrew from the election after, he says, child protection services threatened to take his children into care.
He claims that the authorities did not want him to run against a candidate favored by the ruling Fidesz party.
A day after filming in one village, police allegedly visited the hotel where they were staying to request a guest list.
"We believe that most police officers in the country are honest people. So it's not about the police. It's more about political influence on the police," said director Timár.
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Voters offered money are typically offered 50-60 thousand forints (5-6 thousand UAH - ed.) per vote - a significant sum in communities where child benefits are quite meager.
But the filmmakers emphasize that what they describe is much more than just a voter bribery operation. In previous elections in some villages mentioned in the film, 80-100% of voters cast their ballots for Fidesz.
Possible practices in the film include providing cars and minibuses on election day, pretending voters are illiterate to obtain an "escort" at the polling station, photographing ballots to confirm a vote for Fidesz, and "chain voting."
There have been previous accusations of voter bribery in Hungarian elections, but on a much smaller, localized scale and without any claims of significant impact on the results.
A significant portion of Hungary's approximately 800,000 Roma minority live in poverty. According to a state-supported Maltese charity, 270,000 of them live in Hungary's 300 poorest settlements.
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One of the most shocking claims made by several characters in the film is that "crack" - a cheap, highly addictive synthetic drug widely used in poor villages - is also used to bribe voters.
Hungary under the Fidesz government has some of the strictest drug criminalization laws in Europe.
Police reports indicate a growing epidemic of drug use in poor settlements.
To combat the crack epidemic, the Hungarian police's "Delta" program was established in March 2025.
Critics say it is ineffective. "They arrested 12 people; 10 were released; one was held for 24 hours," one character tells the interviewer.
The publication notes that the film was released just two weeks before the Hungarian elections, and the election campaign is almost daily accompanied by claims of internal and external conspiracies to undermine fair voting.
Fidesz representatives, including the Prime Minister, claim EU and Ukrainian interference to prevent Orbán's fifth consecutive victory.
Independent media and the opposition Tisza party claim Russia's involvement in supporting Orbán, who is considered Vladimir Putin's closest partner in the European Union.
The Washington Post recently reported on a possible SVR proposal to stage an assassination attempt on Orbán.
The newspaper also provided evidence that Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó commented on closed-door European Council meetings to his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk then reported that Lithuania had asked several years ago to exclude the Hungarian delegation from a NATO meeting due to fears of information leaks to Russia.
Initially, Szijjártó condemned the accusations against Russia as fake news, but then stated that consultations with allies are "completely natural."
"I consult with the Turks, the Serbs, and the Russian Foreign Minister. If necessary, I consult with the Chinese, Africans, and Southeast Asian countries to establish cooperation that best serves Hungary's interests," he said.
"We will not abandon national interests, even if there is very crude interference by foreign intelligence in the Hungarian elections with the participation of Brussels."