Swiss rocked as voters swing sharply to the right

SWITZERLAND’S ultra-right People’s party (SVP) has rocked the country’s political system after emerging as the clear winner of Sunday’s general election.

The SVP's success threatens to tip the balance of power in the long-established system under which the four leading parties create a coalition government. The party demanded that it be given a second seat in the seven-member government and proposed Christoph Blocher, its controversial driving force, for a ministerial post.

The party beat even its own most optimistic expectations to capture more than 27% of the vote, according to exit polls. This was 4.7 percentage points ahead of the 22.5% it gained in the last elections in 1999, when it became Switzerland's dominant political force.

Support also increased for the centre-left Social Democrats, who took 23.3% of the vote, and the Greens with 7.8%. By contrast, the popularity of the centre-right Radicals (FDP) and Christian Democrats (CVP), once the main political forces, continued to erode.

The jump in the SVP's share of the vote extraordinary by Swiss standards stemmed from voters' concern about law and order and immigration, portrayed as a cause of rising unemployment.

A multi-millionaire businessman from the Zurich region, Mr Blocher, like France's Jean-Marie le Pen and Jörg Haider in Austria, has increasingly used economic difficulties to play on popular uncertainty, with blatantly racist electoral propaganda linking "black Africans" and the "Albanian mafia" to many of Switzerland's alleged ills.

Last week the Geneva-based United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees drew attention to the racism in the Swiss campaign.

Under a highly complex system unchanged since 1959, the four leading parties share power in the seven-member Federal Council Switzerland's executive with the SVP having one portfolio compared with two each for the FDP, CVP and Social Democrats.

"We achieved more than I had expected," said Ueli Maurer, the SVP's official leader.

"The question of representation in government must now be addressed."

Analysts warned that further polarisation of power in Switzerland's traditionally stable, consensus-based system, boded ill for the ability of the new government to be appointed on December 12 to tackle pressing structural economic problems.

"I'm very sceptical about any fundamental changes. The mechanism to elect the government is such that things don't really work," said Thomas Held, of the Avenir Suisse thinktank.