Kako podkuplja Madžare v Vojvodini za glasove iz tujine in še kaj, če bo treba.
The 800,000-Serbian dinar ($7,600) grant under Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s cross-border stimulus program, for poorer, ethnic Hungarian regions in central Europe, enabled Kracsun to buy expensive welding machinery which would otherwise have been beyond his means.
More than one million ethnic Hungarians live in neighboring Serbia, Romania, Ukraine and elsewhere, descendants of Hungarians who found themselves outside their homeland when the country’s borders were redrawn at the end of World War One.
With a parliamentary election in April 2018 drawing closer, 54-year-old Orban is expanding his political arsenal to include ethnic Hungarians like Kracsun through grants and heavily-subsidized loans to small businesses.
As a first step, Orban gave these ethnic Hungarians citizenship after a 2010 landslide, followed by voting rights. That helped Orban eke out a two-thirds parliamentary majority at the last election in 2014 as such voters overwhelmingly backed him.
“Our workload has doubled,” thanks to the new machinery purchased after receiving the grant, Kracsun said in the shade of his rudimentary workshop.
“We have not had such an opportunity in this country or this region so far,” Kracsun said, adding that he intended to support Orban’s ruling right-wing Fidesz party next April because of the measures he was taking to support voters outside Hungary.
“They take care of us. It is a good feeling. We have always felt Hungarian, regardless of the border.”
That sentiment was widespread in Vojvodina, a northern region in Serbia and home to about a 200,000-strong Hungarian community. Most of the ethnic Hungarians Reuters interviewed for this story and who were grant recipients plan to vote for Orban next year.
The 800,000-Serbian dinar ($7,600) grant under Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s cross-border stimulus program, for poorer, ethnic Hungarian regions in central Europe, enabled Kracsun to buy expensive welding machinery which would otherwise have been beyond his means.
More than one million ethnic Hungarians live in neighboring Serbia, Romania, Ukraine and elsewhere, descendants of Hungarians who found themselves outside their homeland when the country’s borders were redrawn at the end of World War One.
With a parliamentary election in April 2018 drawing closer, 54-year-old Orban is expanding his political arsenal to include ethnic Hungarians like Kracsun through grants and heavily-subsidized loans to small businesses.
As a first step, Orban gave these ethnic Hungarians citizenship after a 2010 landslide, followed by voting rights. That helped Orban eke out a two-thirds parliamentary majority at the last election in 2014 as such voters overwhelmingly backed him.
“Our workload has doubled,” thanks to the new machinery purchased after receiving the grant, Kracsun said in the shade of his rudimentary workshop.
“We have not had such an opportunity in this country or this region so far,” Kracsun said, adding that he intended to support Orban’s ruling right-wing Fidesz party next April because of the measures he was taking to support voters outside Hungary.
“They take care of us. It is a good feeling. We have always felt Hungarian, regardless of the border.”
That sentiment was widespread in Vojvodina, a northern region in Serbia and home to about a 200,000-strong Hungarian community. Most of the ethnic Hungarians Reuters interviewed for this story and who were grant recipients plan to vote for Orban next year.