Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán initiated a large-scale national poll called Voks 2025, in which citizens were supposed to express their views on a number of political issues, including Ukraine’s accession to the European Union. However, the campaign, which lasted several months and cost the budget tens of billions of forints, ended in a complete fiasco. About this stated the leader of the opposition party “Tisa” Peter Madyar in a post on Facebook.
Despite official government claims of two million people participating, in practice, according to the Hungarian Post Office, only 3-7% of citizens returned ballots with answers. This means that no more than 500,000 people voted by paper. As government representative Hergei Gulyash admitted, there were even fewer online responses. Magyar emphasized that this is the lowest figure in the entire history of “National Consultations” and called the campaign a “total failure.”
The opposition accuses the authorities of trying to legalize fictitious results and turn the failed poll into a propaganda tool. According to Magyar, the main goal of the initiative was an attempt to portray Ukraine’s accession to the EU as a threat to the economy, farmers and sovereignty of Hungary in order to create a negative attitude in society. According to the opposition, the government is trying to replace the real will of the people with manipulation, disguising a propaganda campaign as a “consultation with citizens.”
Amidst the failure of Voks 2025, the opposition Tisza party held its own referendum, which its leader said was much more successful and addressed the real issues of Hungarian society. Magyar also criticized the government’s intention to notarize Orbán’s dubious campaign results, calling it an attempt to validate fake data.
