With the help of Ferenc Gyurcsány’s old confidants, Joe Biden’s man, David Pressman, implemented the pro-war poster campaign financed by US budget funds – Origo writes. As is well known, billboards demanding the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine have appeared across the country in recent days, drawing parallels with the Hungarian revolution of 1956.
As written,
the campaign launched with American money aims to counterbalance the pro-peace position of the Hungarian government. The posters also state that the political action was started by the Facebook page Nyugati Pályán with the support of the United States Embassy in Budapest
– that is, they pay.
The site called Nyugati Pályán was created in February 2020 and, based on the Origo article, is operated by the communication agency Flow Pr Kft., which is a subsidiary of Splendidea Communications kft., with the support of the US Embassy in Budapest. Its division that carries out integrated corporate communication campaigns. The site advertises itself with the platitude that its purpose is: “to address those who are interested in Hungary’s present and future”. According to them, Hungary should continue on the western path. “We provide arguments for this, and we want to convince as many Hungarians as possible of this,” they write.
According to Origo, Nyugati Pálya has spent nearly HUF 139 million on ads on Facebook and Instagram since its foundation in February 2020. With this, they occupy the thirteenth place in the ranking of the sites with the most advertising, among the left-wing sites, only Órősítő (272 million) and Ezalényeg.hu (228 million) financed by rolling dollars are ahead of them.
The old leftists are moving behind the scenes
The aforementioned Splendidea KFT previously operated under the name Privy Council Tanácsadó Kft. and is connected to the Hungarian left-wing elite on several lines. Privy was part of the Capital Group Zrt, one of the main members of which was Political Capital, one of the best-known left-wing political consulting institutes. According to a 2007 article by Világgazdaság, the Privy Council PR agency under Capital Group Zrt. was responsible for more than 75 percent of the group’s sales.
Political Capital’s clients once included MDF, which shifted to the left, and a parliamentary question submitted in 2005 also reveals that Splendidea’s legal predecessor received HUF 13,920,000 for strategic and communication consulting from the Gyurcsány government.
Heti Válasz wrote on September 8, 2005 that the then left-wing Metropolitan Municipality commissioned Privy to provide communication related to road renovation (“traffic jam communicator”) tasks. This meant HUF 28.6 million gross for them, which was nearly one tenth of the Capital group’s income.
The two key people of the company group are two old Free Democratic cadres, Krisztián Szabados and Zoltán Somogyi. The latter was previously the managing director of Splendidea and one of the founders of Political Capital alongside Szabados.
In 1990, at the age of 17, Somogyi joined the SZDSZ as a party member, and in 1999 he terminated his party membership because he entered a business career. In addition to Political Capital, he also acted as MDF’s campaign manager and adviser to Dávid Ibolya, not very successfully, as he led the regime change party out of parliament in the 2010 elections.
By the way, between 2006 and 2010, the Political Capital group received many orders from the second Gyurcsány government, so the company received HUF 432.2 million in public funds. Part of this, HUF 190 million, came from the National Security Office.
The fact that Somogyi took part in writing Ferenc Gyurcsány’s 2004 campaign program also proves the relationship of trust with the Prime Minister at that time. Currently, he has appeared in the Jobbik area, working as a consultant and analyst at the Civitas Institute close to the party.
Somogyi’s advice is also in demand elsewhere, as in 2022, together with Zoltán Kész, one of the leaders of the Everyone’s Hungary Movement, he participated in the so-called Civil Platform, one of his digitalization studies was included in the election program of the left-wing alliance. In December 2021, Somogyi himself announced that an agreement had been reached between Péter Márki-Zay and the Civil Platform NGO.
The managing director of Splendidea, which implemented the current poster campaign launched with American money, is Krisztián Szabados, who has been with the company since 2007 and is currently the managing director of Flow PR Kft., and was the owner and director of Political Capital between 2001-2019. The company manager of Splendidea is Péter Sajti Botond, who started his career at RTL Klub – as an online editor between 2002 and 2003 – and then worked at Splendidea’s predecessor, Privy Council Communications, between 2003 and 2010, and since then he is a Flow PR employee.
In the pro-war campaign supported by the US embassy in Budapest, therefore, the confidants of the Gyurcsány era play an important role.