Rightists strengthen hold on Swiss ParliamentOct 21, 2007
After a campaign troubled by violence and widely criticized as racist, Switzerland's far-right Swiss People's Party strengthened its position as the biggest single party in Parliament on Sunday, according to initial electoral projections.
The outcome seems unlikely to lead to any dramatic shifts in government or policies. As Pierre Weiss a candidate of the center-right Liberal Party, put it, "All of the main forces of yesterday will remain the main forces of tomorrow."
Still, he agreed with other analysts that the gains by the Swiss People's Party portended more of the polarization that Switzerland's previously placid politics has experienced in the past four years, straining its tradition of consensus and leaving cracks in its carefully nurtured image abroad as a bastion of tolerance and humanitarian values.
The Swiss People's Party, or SVP, which
campaigned on an aggressively anti-immigrant ticket featuring posters that showed white sheep kicking a black sheep off the Swiss flag, received about 29 percent of the vote and
61 of the 200 seats in Parliament, projections showed, up from 27 percent and 55 seats in 2003. It was comfortably ahead of the Social Democratic Party, which dropped from 23 percent of the vote to 19 percent and was projected with 43 seats, as opposed to 52 in the most recent Parliament.
Among centrist parties, the projections showed the Free Democratic Party finishing with a smaller vote and 31 seats in Parliament, 5 fewer than last time, and the Christian Democrats also with 31 seats.
The result would still leave the Swiss People's Party dependent on the votes of centrist parties to get legislation through Parliament, said Bianca Rousselot, a political scientist at Gfs.Bern, who was monitoring the voting.
Rousselot said the result showed a shift to the right at the expense of the Social Democrats. "The SVP will feel it legitimizes their call
for stricter policies on immigration and in foreign affairs," she said.
The Swiss People's Party's victory focused attention on the next round of political jousting over the makeup of the seven-seat Federal Council, which functions as Switzerland's cabinet and will be decided by a vote of Parliament on Dec. 12.
The party shook up Switzerland's normally placid politics by leveraging its gains in the last elections, in 2003, to demand a second seat in the Federal Council, jettisoning the "magic formula" that had dictated the distribution of seats among the four major parties since 1959.
It won the seat, which went to its leader, Christoph Blocher. Before the elections Sunday, Blocher caused a stir by expressing a preference for kicking out the Socialist Party and governing through a rightist alliance.
The Socialists, in turn, said they would vote against Blocher's returning to the Federal Council.
If Blocher, who now holds the position of justice minister, remains in the council, he is in line to become its vice chairman next year and its chairman, or Switzerland's president, in 2009. The position has a largely symbolic role, yet it raises the prospect that the job of representing Switzerland to the outside world would fall to a politician who is hostile to the European Union and at odds with Swiss traditions of openness.
The level of controversy surrounding Blocher's autocratic style has raised doubts that Parliament will back him for the post of vice chairman in December, automatically ruling him out of the presidency in 2009.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/10/21/sports/swiss.php
