Gov’t Continues to Use Vaccination Registration Emails for Campaign Purposes

Hungary Today 2022.03.23.

“The government is campaigning against the opposition and the European Union by sending messages to email addresses originally intended for vaccination registration,” an opposition candidate from Veszprém said on Tuesday. In recent months, people have received numerous emails from the government’s information center that are no longer about the epidemic but much more about “slandering” the opposition.

This article was originally published on our sister-site, Ungarn Heute.

“The Cabinet has made it a general practice to use all possible means for propaganda,” the DK politician said at an online press conference. People who signed up for a newsletter from the government’s communications center were originally promised information about vaccinations, but the Cabinet has continuously used this platform to spread its “lies and propaganda,” Balázs Csonka said.

He went on to stress that messages were regularly sent out “insulting Brussels and the left and making seriously false claims.” Anyone in their right mind can see that the sanctions against Russia are not just a “mean conspiracy” by Brussels and the Hungarian left.

A few weeks ago, these emails accused the opposition of trying to send weapons and troops to Ukraine and that they wanted to prevent gas supplies and abolish utility cost cuts. After the court reprimanded the government, the next email did not describe exactly who they were referring to, but said that “some would include the energy sector” in the scope of sanctions against Russia, which would “disproportionately harm our country.”

Fact

In early March, Hungary’s Supreme Court, the “Kúria,” had already condemned the Fidesz-led government for sending campaign messages, or rather harsh and deceptive criticism about the opposition, to those who had registered for the coronavirus vaccine. However, he Constitutional Court has annulled the ruling of the Kúria. According to the Constitutional Court, the Kúria did not give sufficient weight to the fact that the bulletin, which did not qualify as a campaign tool, was made under special circumstances, in an extraordinary war situation, primarily in order to inform citizens.

On Tuesday morning, those who had signed up for the vaccination received another email from the Government Information Center, saying that “some leaders in Brussels want to punish Russia at any cost” and that there are “some actors in Hungarian public life who support these ideas and would even “turn off the gas tap.”

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featured image via Márton Mónus/MTI