BUDAPEST – The Hungarian opposition had USB flash drives, audio recordings and screenshots of compromising evidence about the privacy and infidelity of senior political figures in Viktor Orbán’s government, but chose not to use the material.
The discovery that compromises – a Russian term for incriminating information used to slander or discredit opponents – existed in a rare interview with Péter Tóth, campaign manager and gray eminence behind the Tisza party that won an election landslide 12 days ago.
said Toth partisan – the same independent YouTube channel where Péter Magyar, the future Prime Minister of Hungary first started his political career in 2024 – from the secrets of his campaign.
He revealed that he and Tisza had received – from unspecified sources – a quantity of compromising material in the run-up to the election, but he chose not to use it.
“Campaign professionals usually say that negative campaigning is essential for mobilization. I don’t believe that. I held back and kept those flash drives… with which we would have destroyed other people’s families,” he said, adding that “men, women and children do not deserve’ to be punished for the weaknesses of politicians.
Setting a new political standard in a country known for dirty political tricksTóth confirmed that he destroyed the files completely after winning the election. “These materials are no longer with me, nor anywhere else. They are gone.”
Instead of slander, Tóth insisted that Magyar and Tisza won the old-fashioned way, by campaigning on the ground.
Candidate selection included deliberate stress tests to assess resilience, and 106 local candidates were asked to personally contact 15,000 voters. The campaign bypassed the media with Tóth arguing that physical handshakes yielded higher local political dividends than media interviews.
Politics is about being able to appeal to as many voters as possible, Tóth stressed.
“We can address as many voters as possible if we can reach them and for that we need as many connections as possible, as many contacts as possible,” he concluded.
(cs)
