Magyar Péter, leader of the opposition Tisza Party, publicly accused the ruling Fidesz party of fabricating signature collection data, escalating tensions just 50 days before parliamentary elections and raising fundamental questions about electoral transparency in Hungary.
The controversy erupted after government officials, including Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, declared Saturday evening that Fidesz had decisively won the petition signature collection phase. The Foundation for Fundamental Rights, aligned with the government, released figures purportedly from the National Election Office showing Fidesz collected 196,000 signatures compared to Tisza's 110,000.
Magyar challenged these claims Sunday morning, posting to social media that "everyone could see personally, in videos and photos, that crowds lined up at Tisza tables" while "Fidesz didn't dare appear in public spaces, or their paid activists stood alone."
The dispute took a decisive turn when Telex, an independent Hungarian news outlet, investigated the National Election Office data. According to their reporting, no numerical data exists regarding actual signature counts collected by individual parties or candidates.
The Election Office tracks only submission sheets, each containing up to eight signatures. Fidesz-KDNP submitted 24,523 sheets, while Tisza submitted 13,806 sheets. However, the actual number of valid signatures on those sheets remains unknown, as the NVI does not maintain such data during the collection phase.
"After the Fidesz headquarters confronted their enormous defeat, they thought they'd quickly make up some random number citing the NVI," Magyar wrote, reported by Hang.hu. "But they got caught even faster than usual."
