Posted on 10/20/2003 7:28:35 PM PDT by blam
Swiss lurch to right follows trend in Europe
Victory of the People's party threatens 'cosy consensus' as leader denies he has anything against foreigners
Luke Harding in Berlin
Tuesday October 21, 2003
The Guardian (UK)
The leader of Switzerland's far-right People's party, which won a stunning victory in the country's general elections over the weekend, last night denied he had anything against foreigners. Christoph Blocher - a blunt German-speaking billionaire businessman - yesterday shrugged off comparisons with the far-right Austrian leader Jörg Haider, after his anti-immigrant SVP party emerged as the most powerful force in Swiss politics.
In an interview published yesterday, Mr Blocher said that foreigners were still welcome in Switzerland - so long as they were not illegal immigrants. He denied that he was xenophobic and said that his biggest political hero was Winston Churchill.
"Our success is a clear sign that people want another type of politics," he told Switzerland's Neue Zürcher newspaper. "I am a liberal conservative," he added.
The SVP won 27.7% of the vote in Sunday's elections - more than any other party. The centre-left Social Democrats got 23.3%, while the Greens won 7.8%.
The far right's success was at the expense of Switzerland's two traditional centre-right parties, the Radicals (FDP) and Christian Democrats (CVP), and came after the most explicitly foreigner-bashing campaign in Switzerland's history.
The result not only stunned political observers but also threatens Switzerland's cosy tradition of political consensus, in which all four leading parties, including the SVP, share power.
Mr Blocher wants a second seat in the country's seven-seat cabinet - for himself - and last night threatened to go into opposition if he fails to get it.
Despite the SVP being the biggest party, all parties get together and decide who gets the cabinet portfolios. It was not clear yesterday whether they would allow the SVP another seat. If Mr Blocher's demand is not met, the party could wreak havoc in opposition. "Never in our history has a political party grown so quickly," Jean-Philippe Jeannarat, spokesman for Switzerland's rival Social Democrats admitted yesterday. "Twelve years ago the SVP got only 12%."
Switzerland's apparent lurch to the right follows the success of other far-right parties in recent elections in several other European countries, most notably in Austria and Holland, but also in France, Denmark, Belgium, Germany and even the UK.
In Austria Jörg Haider's Freedom party came second in the 1999 elections and won a place in government alongside the centre-right People's party.
Political observers have ascribed the rise of the far right to several factors: the wave of nationalism that swept across much of Europe after the cold war; the uncertain economic situation; the failure of countries like Austria, Italy, and eastern Germany to come to terms with their fascist past; and the dull consensus politics of places like Holland and France. The success of the far right has often proved short-lived. In Austria, the ruling coalition collapsed last year after a bitter feud between Jörg Haider and his party colleagues.
Yesterday political commentators said the SVP's clear-cut victory in Switzerland was not just the result of the party's foreigner-bashing rhetoric but also rising unemployment - now at 4% - and the country's faltering economy.
"This is our version of Thatcherism rather than Haiderism,' Johann Aesclimann, a Swiss political journalist, said. "There is no doubt that Blocher flirts with Haider-ism from time to time. But it is also law and order, liberal economic policies and tight fiscal policies which have brought him popular success."
Nonetheless, many other European countries are likely to be dismayed by the success of Mr Blocher's party, which vehemently opposes the idea of Switzerland joining the EU, as well as the EU's expansion next year, and campaigned last year against Swiss membership of the UN.
In the run-up to the polls, the SVP put up election posters of a black face accompanied by the slogan: "The Swiss are becoming Negroes." They also ran posters showing mugshots of criminals next to the words 'Our Dear Foreigners'. Last week the United Nations High Commission for Refugees attacked the campaign as "atrocious".
Mr Blocher, 63, is a veteran of the Swiss political scene, as well as a self-made billionaire who owns a chemicals firm. In numerous interviews he has linked immigration with crime, and has said that Albanian and African drugs gangs are responsible for many of Switzerland's woes.
The most ominous aspect of Sunday's election result is that Mr Blocher's message appears to be catching on in areas where he previously had little support. The SVP has normally done well in Switzerland's rural German-speaking east, but over the weekend won seats for the first time in French-speaking areas.
Yesterday, Mr Blocher spent the day discussing strategy with party colleagues. His party now has 56 seats out of 200 in Switzerland's new lower house, but only one seat in the seven-seat cabinet. Last night the SVP's spokesman, Yves Bichel said that if the party didn't get a second seat it would go into opposition, plunging Switzerland's system of consensus politics into unprecedented turmoil.
Dr Bichel denied the accusation that his party was racist, but said that 90% of all of Switzerland's asylum seekers were bogus.
Many of them were involved in violent crime, he added. "The left parties accuse us of racism because they don't have any arguments."
Quest for power
Austria: The right-wing Freedom party was invited to form a coalition in February despite polling well below the 27% of the vote it secured under the leadership of Jörg Haider in the 1999 national elections. Mr Haider stepped down as the party's leader in May 2000.
Belgium: The Vlaams Blok party achieved the best result of its 25-year history in May, becoming the biggest party in Antwerp and polling 17% of the vote in Flanders. Under the leadership of Filip Dewinter, it called for illegal and "criminal" immigrants to be deported.
France: Jean-Marie Le Pen was convincingly defeated in the May 2002 presidential election and a month later his National Front party failed to win a single seat in the legislative elections. In 1998 regional elections it polled 15.25% of the vote and returned 275 regional councillors. Mr Le Pen once described the holocaust as a "detail of history".
Italy: The Northern League, led by Umberto Bossi, was given three cabinet seats in Silvio Berlusconi's coalition government in 2001 despite polling only 4% of the vote. Mr Bossi rose to fame in the 1990s campaigning for total secession of northern Italy, which he called Padania.
Netherlands: In May 2002 right-wing politician Pim Fortuyn was shot dead shortly after his List Fortuyn party achieved success in local elections. They captured 35% of the vote in Rotterdam city council elections, while calling Islam a "backward religion".
It will get much worse. Europe will be in turmoil in short order. Wanna bet who saves their butts again?
I was all set to bash the Guardian for its obvious leftist bias until I read that. Who is he trying to kid with a campaign slogan like that?
In The Telegraph yesterday, they printed what was really said, he used the 'N' word, not Negroes
There is a Swiss-german expression of someone "being the negro" which means being the one that is always unfairly treated, is poor and ignored by everyone else (so, to use a trivial example: "I am the youngest of four children and my siblings always got the best toys and the new clothes. In my family, I was always the negro"). The SVP were refering to how they think Switzerland has been badly treated by the international press and certain local left-wingers - being portrayed as 'Hitler's bankers' and rich, selfish people and so on.
The Neger expression isn't used that much anymore and the fact that the poster also featured a very crude characture of a black person meant it was open to interpretation as to what the poster was really saying. The makers of the poster must have known what they appeared to be saying.
Political observers have ascribed the rise of the far right to several factors: the wave of nationalism that swept across much of Europe after the cold war; the uncertain economic situation; the failure of countries like Austria, Italy, and eastern Germany to come to terms with their fascist past; and the dull consensus politics of places like Holland and France.
Somebody is simply not getting it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.