Swiss voters backed moderate forces in a general election on Sunday in which nationalists failed in their effort to break through the 30 percent barrier with a campaign heavy on anti-immigrant sentiment.
The nationalist Swiss People’s Party (SVP) was projected to take 26.8 percent of the vote for the lower house, a drop of 2.1 percent on four years ago, according to public television station SF.
“We didn’t achieve our election goal,” People’s Party president Toni Brunner said as results trickled in.
Photo: AFP
The party’s rise was stalled by the Conservative Democratic Party whose members split from the SVP in 2007, and the centrist Green Liberal Party, which successfully rode a wave of anti-nuclear sentiment following the disaster at Japan’s Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in March.
Both are expected to receive about 5.5 percent of the vote for the 200-seat National Council. Voters are also deciding on 45 of 46 seats for the upper house, or Council of States.
The panoply of political parties in makes for intense haggling after every election, as each group demands fair representation in the country’s cross-party government.
The result is Switzerland’s unique “magic formula,” designed to condense complex electoral results into a seven-member Cabinet capable of governing by consensus despite sometimes widely differing views.
Despite its worse-than-expected result, the People’s Party retains the biggest share of the vote and immediately laid claim to two seats in the Cabinet.
The party has built up a strong base of voters with campaigns warning of immigrants spoiling an Alpine nation that’s been an oasis of relative stability within stormy Europe.
In its campaign, the People’s Party accused foreigners of driving up Switzerland’s crime rate, and campaigned for those convicted of crimes to be deported. It also wants to reintroduce quotas on immigration from the 27 countries of the EU, of which Switzerland isn’t a member, illustrating the point with striking posters of black boots stomping on the Swiss flag with the message “Stop Mass Immigration.”
The number of foreigners living in Switzerland rose almost 3 percent to 1.7 million over the past year — mostly Italians, Germans, Portuguese and Serbs. Switzerland, along with Luxembourg and Liechtenstein, has one of the highest proportions of foreign inhabitants in Europe.
They account for one of every five of the country’s nearly 7.9 million permanent residents, and mostly live in one of the five large cities of Zurich, Geneva, Basel, Lausanne and Bern.
Many of the foreigners who work in Switzerland come for jobs for which they’re considered highly qualified, but that hasn’t stopped the Swiss from worrying that the influx of outsiders in their midst is spurring a rise in crime, house prices and joblessness.
For some voters, however, the People’s Party’s relentless focus on foreigners went too far.
Pushing a stroller in the capital Bern with his twin one-year-old sons — half-Swiss, half-Sri Lankan — architect Timo Odoni pointed to one of the nationalists’ posters.
“I just can’t stand how they do their posters because it reminds me of 60 years before, in Germany, a little bit. And we have to do something about it,” Odoni said.
“I certainly will vote the green and left parties,” he said. “We have no problem with immigration, really. We have other problems, but not this problem.”
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese