Fidesz sends letter in Chinese, showing recipients how to vote

According to the official data of the 2022 census, there are 98,319 foreign citizens living in Budapest, and about 15 percent of the foreign population is of Chinese origin. (The Hungarian Central Statistical Office counts those who are dual citizens as Hungarian citizens.) There are three districts with more than a thousand Chinese citizens living in Budapest: the tenth, the thirteenth and the eighth.

Hence, it shouldn't come as a surprise that, ahead of the forthcoming municipal elections (held on the same day as the EP elections) the governing Fidesz-KDNP coalition doesn't intend to leave this community without any information. A few days ago, a letter written in Chinese, which includes a photo of Alexandra Szentkirályi, the party's candidate for mayor, along with a ballot filled in as a guide, (on which the votes in support of Fidesz were circled in advance) had appeared on the Internet.

The letter was addressed to a Chinese citizen living in the 8th district. There was no return address on the envelope, only a QR code for joining a group chat on WeChat, which, according to the user who originally posted the letter, no one had joined until then.

The person who posted the letter on Reddit sent us a scanned, higher quality version of the letter, which was a little easier for the translation programs to work with, even although it might not be necessary for figuring out the message. In the first half of the letter, after a brief introduction, Alexandra Szentkirályi talks about Xi Jinping's recent "historic" visit to Hungary, and points out that friendship with the Chinese people has always been of special importance to Hungarians.

According to Szentkirályi, since Fidesz has been governing Hungary, relations between the two countries have been steadily improving. The ruling party has always extended a warm welcome to Chinese friends and businessmen who come to the country, and this will remain important for Fidesz in the future as well, she said.

However, the mayoral candidate regrets that Budapest is currently being run by the opposition, which resulted in the city's overall development going in the wrong direction. Traffic is chaotic, there is rubbish everywhere and the city hall is a hotbed of corruption. This has to change, and Alexandra Szentkirályi is asking Chinese citizens to vote for her, adding that she used to be deputy mayor of Budapest during "one of its very successful periods" and then served as the government spokesperson. Interestingly, the date on Szentkirályi's part of the letter is a few days later than the actual date of the letter's arrival: 29 May.

Szentkirályi's message is followed by a few words from Botond Sára, who is running for mayor of the eighth district, who also included some specific promises. After a lengthy description of the friendly and business relations between the Chinese and Hungarian people, Sára vows that if he is elected the district's next mayor, he will make sure that a Chinese interpreter is always available at the local clinic (Józsefvárosi Szent Kozma Egészségügyi Központ in Auróra street) and at the district's government's offices. According to the mayoral candidate, decent citizens will be protected from criminals, public places will be kept clean, the renovation of residential buildings will be subsidized, and local residents and businesses will be offered discounted rates for renting business premises owned by the municipality.

The letter has two annexes. One is a leaflet with information on exactly where one should put their X on 9 June and where they should go to vote. The ballot is marked as a 'sample', so in principle it cannot be used fraudulently. The other is a fridge magnet featuring Botond Sára and the constituency's individual candidate.

Naturally, there is nothing in the letter that is inconsistent with the Fidesz campaign and the party's general foreign policy agenda: Xi Jinping paid us a glorious visit, corruption is rampant at city hall, there's chaos in Budapest, we need change. Even the very fact that candidates are contacting voters by letter doesn’t count as unique either, as any politician running in an election can do so by requesting names and addresses from the National Election Office's register.

In any case, we would have wanted to know the ruling party’s opinion on the letters, why they were written, and on what basis the recipients were selected. We sent questions to Fidesz's central press department, Alexandra Szentkirályi, Botond Sára and Fidesz's office in Józsefváros too. So far, we have not received a reply from any of them. We contacted Szentkirályi's staff by phone, but they did not respond, citing time constraints.

A further reason why we wanted to find out from Fidesz exactly what criteria were used to select the recipients was that on Friday, one of our readers reported that her husband, who is from Western Europe and lives in the eighth district, had also received such a letter. The only twist being that her husband is not Chinese, but only has a surname that might sound Asian to a layperson.