Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has urged ethnic Hungarians abroad to cast their ballots in Hungary's general election next spring. The government will be sending out letters to ethnic Hungarians around the world in the coming weeks asking them to vote.
In a Facebook post, Csaba Dömötör, the parliamentary state secretary of the Prime Minister’s Office, noted that the Hungarian parliament had passed a law on introducing dual citizenship, and over 1.1 million Hungarians abroad had taken the opportunity to become citizens with voting rights. “Hungarians abroad are now entitled to participate in making decisions on our future, and express their views during the general election,” he said. The prime minister will now ask them to take part in common decision making and participate in the vote, he added.
Referring to a referendum held under Fidesz’s governing predecessor in which the granting of citizenship to ethnic Hungarians abroad was rejected, Dömötör noted that December 5, 2004, the date of that plebiscite, had marked a “trauma that is hard to forget” in the country’s relationship with Hungarian communities abroad.
Under a recent amendment to the electoral law, Hungarian citizens living abroad will have the right to vote even if they are not resident in Hungary.
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