inside switzerland - politics.
This article was first published in INSIDE Switzerland Magazine - October 2007
Swiss Elections Analysis
Tom Armitage - Zurich
Reading about the recent Swiss election abroad, you might be forgiven for thinking the famously tolerant country had just veered hard to the right and become a hotbed for xenophobia and racism. Switzerland’s complex political system means there is no way one party can dominate policy-making, even if, like the Swiss People’s Party (SVP/UDC), it has won the biggest share of the vote. Increased support for the party and its tough-stance on foreigners, however, could be presage trouble ahead as Switzerland is forced to confront the realities of immigration.
After running a campaign focusing on its leader figure, Christoph Blocher, and promising to boot out foreign criminals, the SVP/UDC consolidated its position as Switzerland’s most popular political party in October’s parliamentary election. It took 29 percent of the vote, 2.3 percentage points more than in 2003, and the best result by a party in almost 90 years. Its nearest rivals, the Social Democrats, lost out to the Greens and slipped to 19.5 percent, while the centre-right Free Liberals and Christian Democrats each took around 15 percent.
Foreign media spoke of xenophobic sentiment in Switzerland and latched on to rare scenes of violence in the peaceable country when police and left-wing activists clashed at an SVP/UDC rally in the capital Berne on October 6. In fact, the election result comes as no surprise: the SVP/UDC has been on the rise for years, winning conservative voters to its cause with a mix of populist rhetoric on immigrants, promises of lower taxes and an unwavering commitment to maintaining Swiss independence from the European Union.
As anyone looking at the party’s marketing campaign would testify, the SVP/UDC also appears to spend more money and more time than Switzerland’s other parties on producing effective poster campaigns with deliberately provocative messages. Add in the pugnacious personalities of billionaire industrialist and justice minister, Blocher, and that of outgoing party President Ueli Maurer, and you apparently have a recipe for success in the otherwise bland world of Swiss politics.
The Alpine nation’s political system means election success is less significant than it might be in other European democracies: proportional representation in the lower house and four-party coalition government means that no one party can really dominate political decision-making in Switzerland. As Hans Hirter, a political scientist at the University of Berne, says: “It is a slight move to the right because the SVP are a little stronger in parliament. Nevertheless, they are still a minority with 29 percent.”
////Seeking a majority
The SVP/UDC will continue to seek ad hoc coalitions with its political rivals on issues where the parties see eye-to-eye but the lack of consensus on immigration and relations with the EU – both of which are dear to the right-wing – means that policy in those areas is unlikely to change very much. “There will be a conservative majority in questions of economic liberalisation and taxes, for instance,” says Hirter. “But in questions of relations of the EU and immigration policies they will continue to remain in the minority.”
Not only does the Swiss system make parties join forces to get measures adopted, but it also encourages them to take into account potential opposition and try to head it off: any government decision can be put to a public vote. Another aspect of this system of direct democracy is that public votes can be raised on issues like immigration. The SVP/UDC has used this to its advantage in recent years. The infamous SVP/UDC ‘black sheep’ posters, which featured three white sheep on a Swiss flag, booting off a black sheep, called for a people’s vote on the compulsory deportation of foreign criminals after they serve a sentence for serious crime.
Swiss President Micheline Calmy-Rey said the posters were ‘irresponsible’ and the United Nation’s rapporteur on racism, Doudou Diene, asked the Swiss government for an explanation. The party is also collecting signatures for a national vote on banning the construction of new minarets in the country. The SVP/UDC are increasingly using the direct democratic system to further their policy, experts say.
“In former times we had elections and then things were quiet again,” said Georg Kreis, president of the Federal Commission against Racism. “Now it is like in sport: ‘after is before’.” While the SVP/UDC is bound to cooperate with other parties in government, all predications are that it will continue to use its considerable marketing expertise to drum up such campaigns. “They are very good at marketing and concentrate on issues where they think they can gain points with certain parts of the population,” Hirter said. “It is also a question of money – the SVP/UDC have the money to do it.”
////Stoking anti-foreigner sentiment?
To many, the SVP/UDC’s blunt poster campaigners are offensive. “A lot of people feel much more offended by the way things are presented than by the content,” said Elsbeth Steiner, a spokeswoman for the Swiss Federal Commission for Foreigners in Berne. “Many people agree that we should send criminal foreigners out of the country. But it is the way that it is being presented that is the problem.”
Recent SVP/UDC posters supporting tight controls on the process of naturalising foreigners living in Switzerland, feature a tray of bright red Swiss passports being snatched up by hands in various ‘non-white’ skin tones. Steiner says such poster campaigns are likely to stoke anti-foreigner sentiment. “As a result of the SVP/UDC campaigns, I think it will be less politically incorrect to call for measures that no one would have asked for before,” said Steiner. According to Ricardo Lumengo, a Social Democrat elected as the country’s first black member of parliament, xenophobia is on the rise. He hopes to use his seat in Switzerland’s lower house to push for the integration of foreigners.
“Racism is becoming a social problem. In my 20 to 25 years in Switzerland I have consistently observed it getting worse,” said the Biel-based politician and former asylum seeker. “To a certain degree this is because unemployment has risen slightly and people use this to generalise about racism.” In his native Angola, says Lumengo, Switzerland was seen as a country of tolerance and openness – the country of the International Committee of the Red Cross. He became a citizen of Switzerland in 1997. He says the SVP/UDC used simple messages to appeal to voters’ emotions in the last election. “Although the SVP/UDC have defended their advertising, among others the black sheep ad, as saying this it was not meant to be racist and xenophobic and should be left to people’s own interpretation, they, as a political party, need to take responsibility for such interpretations,” said Lumengo.
////Foreigners fuel boom
One in five people in Switzerland is a foreigner. Behind the statistics, however, the realities of their lives are quite different. Consider that this figure includes resident asylum seekers, the non-naturalised children and grandchildren of Italian guest workers and highly qualified white-collar workers. The Swiss economy has long relied on foreign labour to help fuel growth and perform jobs that Swiss workers were over qualified or unwilling to undertake. Italian immigrants, many of whom came in the 1950s and 1960s, helped power the nation’s tunnel and road building programmes, for instance. But their contribution did not help them in the process of naturalisation or spare them from xenophobia.
Even their children and grandchildren, who lived and worked here their entire lives, were denied a standardised programme of assisted naturalisation in a referendum in 2004. “There are people who want them to integrate but do not accept them as their own,” Steiner said. “They want integration but will not go as far as taking them into the family.”
According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Switzerland has one of the highest levels of immigration of any of the world’s developed nations. “Drawn by the prospects of comfortable living standards and strong labour demand, immigrants have been attracted to Switzerland over many decades,” the organisation said in its latest report on the Swiss economy. In particular, those who settled in Switzerland in recent years thanks to an agreement with the EU on the free movement of people, have made a notable contribution.
“The current upswing would be completely impossible without the migration of highly-qualified persons,“ said Thomas Held, director of the political think tank Avenir Suisse. International companies like Google and Ebay have set up large operations in Switzerland, while others like banks and insurers are reliant on foreign skilled workers in times of expansion. There is a concern, therefore, that any attempt to reverse the agreement or restrict access to the jobs market for foreign workers may be a blow to Switzerland’s growth prospects since it could stem the supply and encourage regulation. “The fact that a party won that might, and I stress might, be opposed to the prolongation of the bilateral accords on the free movement of people would be a very serious problem for the the Swiss business community and the Swiss economy,” Held said.
////More than just the SVP – Greens win too
But the SVP/UDC was not the whole story in this year’s election. The other winners were clearly the Greens. They picked up 2.2 points on concerns about climate change to take 9.6 percent of the voter for the House of Representatives. Lukas Golder, a political analyst at the research institute gfs.bern, noted that the SVP and the Greens were the big winners of this year’s elections, but in very different ways.
Over the years, the SVP has dominated Swiss political campaigning but the Greens have instead benefited from increasing concerns about environmental issues, without necessarily having a coordinated national campaign platform. “Since the election in 2003 they have been able to record successes in many cantons. They have succeeded in maintaining this momentum right through to the 2007 election when they really emphasised the ecological message,” Golder said. A higher number of younger politicians were elected in 2007, though analysts question whether this will have much of an impact in terms of developing youth-oriented policy. And seven more women were elected to the House of Representatives: the majority of whom came from the traditionally-male dominated People’s Party. “It’s a gradual augmentation,” said Hirter.
////Status Quo untroubled
Despite the fears of a lurch to the right, Switzerland’s political landscape appears little changed after the elections. The SVP/UDC, having consolidated its lead, still needs to work with other parties in order to get decisions made. But its hard-line on immigration and populist rhetoric on all other issues is likely to leave its mark on Swiss politics and its increasing power could unsettle the balance on which the concordance system is based. With outgoing SVP/UDC party president Maurer seeking a seat in the upper house of parliament, experts predict that his party’s more confrontational tone could spread to the more reserved upper house.
After a decade of rapid growth, the SVP/UDC is entering a period of renewal: new leaders will take over at the top of the party. That does not necessarily mean that the outspoken and at times controversial party is going soft. “A new party leadership will need time to establish itself and then it will be clear how strong the successors to Maurer will be,” said Golder. “I think this is the interesting issue and I don’t think this party will get any tamer.”
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