{"id":2347,"date":"2022-11-14T13:58:51","date_gmt":"2022-11-14T13:58:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/?p=2347"},"modified":"2025-05-27T14:02:02","modified_gmt":"2025-05-27T13:02:02","slug":"hungarian-opposition-furious-over-u-s-money-for-marki-zays-campaign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/2022\/11\/14\/hungarian-opposition-furious-over-u-s-money-for-marki-zays-campaign\/","title":{"rendered":"Hungarian opposition furious over U.S. money for M\u00e1rki-Zay\u2019s campaign"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hungary<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 On 16 October, P\u00e9ter M\u00e1rki-Zay, Viktor Orb\u00e1n\u2019s unsuccessful opponent in last April\u2019s parliamentary elections, admitted\u00a0on his Facebook account\u00a0that his Hungary for All Movement (MMM) had received 1.8 billion forints (4.4 million euros) from American funds during his election campaign. These revelations are causing a stir within the Hungarian opposition, where this clearly poses an image problem.<\/p>\n

The \u201cunited\u201d opposition\u2019s former leader\u00a0was quoted by the pro-Fidesz daily\u00a0Magyar Nemzet<\/em>\u00a0on 18 October\u00a0as saying:<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of my most important tasks starting last October was to fund the opposition campaign, to buy billboards, Facebook and YouTube ads<\/em>.<\/p>\n

And yes, to do so, we needed a non-partisan and parallel civil campaign, which was led by the MMM and financed by the MMM with the help of large Hungarian donors and Hungarian donors abroad<\/em>.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These funds were transferred to P\u00e9ter M\u00e1rki-Zay\u2019s movement via an American foundation called\u00a0Action for Democracy<\/em>, which is seen by many as blatant U.S. interference in the last Hungarian parliamentary election campaign, thus adding to the latest controversy fuelled by\u00a0the American ambassador\u2019s meeting with top judges from the Hungarian National Judicial Council.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile,\u00a0as\u00a0Origo.hu\u00a0<\/em>rightly pointed out on 18 October, in order to preserve the country\u2019s independence, Hungarian law does not allow political parties to receive foreign funding. Thus M\u00e1rki-Zay\u2019s actions are now being denounced, including by his former allies, for whom it poses a serious image problem.<\/p>\n

In an\u00a0interview published on 3 November by the anti-government website 24.hu, P\u00e9ter Ung\u00e1r, co-chairman of the Hungarian Greens (LMP), unleashed a brutal attack on the candidate his party supported in the elections of 3 April:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had the wrong candidate, we presented a pro-market conservative against Fidesz, while keeping our own thoughts on the world almost secret. There was no unity. The campaign was bad.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(\u2026)\u00a0P\u00e9ter M\u00e1rki-Zay\u00a0<\/em>(\u2026)\u00a0thinks he has done everything right<\/em>. (\u2026)\u00a0he gave ammunition to Fidesz with each of his speeches<\/em>. (\u2026)<\/p>\n

If we in the LMP had known that so much foreign money had come in, we would not have poured so much into the opposition campaign.<\/em>\u00a0(\u2026)\u00a0What the hell is this?! No one knew about it.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(\u2026)\u00a0This money is chilling. And it\u2019s chilling that a lot of people don\u2019t see it as a problem. It\u2019s very problematic. It\u2019s not just a matter of someone giving money. The essence of the party law is that Hungarian citizens can give money to parties. George Soros can give all the money he wants to a party. It\u2019s not a problem if someone puts money into politics, but you have to publish this information in the Hungarian official journal Magyar K\u00f6zl\u00f6ny, this is what the law says.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hungary\u00a0\u2013 On 16 October, P\u00e9ter M\u00e1rki-Zay, Viktor Orb\u00e1n\u2019s unsuccessful opponent in last April\u2019s parliamentary elections, admitted\u00a0on his Facebook account\u00a0that his Hungary for All Movement (MMM) had received 1.8 billion forints (4.4 million euros) from American funds during his election campaign. These revelations are causing a stir within the Hungarian opposition, where this clearly poses an<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2348,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news"],"acf":{"subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2347\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}