Anti-foreigner party makes election gains

The nationalist Swiss People’s Party emerged with the highest share of the vote in parliamentary elections today following an anti-foreigner campaign, according to projections by state-owned Swiss television. The Greens and Social Democrats also picked up seats.

The People’s Party received 27.2% of the vote, replacing the Social Democrats as the top vote getter, according to the projections made on the basis of returns tabulated seven hours after polls closed. The Social Democrats had 23.3%.

“There’s no longer any doubt,” said People’s Party chief Ueli Maurer in claiming a larger share in the governing coalition. The weakest of the other coalition parties will have to give its second seat in the seven-member cabinet to his party, currently the only member with just one seat, Maurer added.

The fractious junior partner in the four-party governing coalition, Maurer’s grouping gained eight seats in early returns for the National Council, the 200-seat lower house of parliament.

The party, whose base has been in the German-speaking Swiss heartland, picked up seats in French-speaking areas where it previously had little clout.

The two centrist parties in the coalition suffered losses. The Radical Democrats were in third place with 16.8% of the vote, down from 19.9% four years ago. The Christian Democrats were in fourth with 14.3%, down from 15.9%.

Christiane Langenberger, president of the Radical Democrats, blamed her party’s losses on fears caused by world economic problems.

“In such times simple slogans are preferred over thoughtful positions,” Langenberger said.

Philipp Staehelin, president of the Christian Democrats, rejected the assertion that the People’s Party should get a second seat. That would weaken a system that has worked for more than 40 years, he said.

The gains by the People’s Party put added strain on the so-called “magic formula” of consensus politics that has governed the Alpine nation since 1959.

The Greens, outside the coalition, picked up three seats, for which co-president Ruth Genner credited the Greens’ environmental and social positions.

She rejected the People’s Party’s claim to another cabinet seat and said: “It’s time for the party to be removed completely from the cabinet.”

Nearly 4.7 million Swiss voters were eligible to cast ballots today for the two-chamber National Assembly, which also includes the 46-seat Council of States. The assembly then will determine the make up of the cabinet on December 7.

Turnout in Swiss elections has been less than 50% since the 1970s. It was 43.3% four years ago.

The People’s Party on Friday was rebuked by the United Nations refugee agency, which said it had placed “some of the most nakedly anti-asylum advertisements by a major political party that we’ve seen in Europe to date.”

The party’s full-page newspaper advertisements last week said: “Certain ethnic groups dominate the criminal statistics,” noting that the number of rapes in Switzerland had risen 70% and murders 32% in recent years.

It cited figures showing that 80% of individuals charged with drug trafficking are foreigners, mostly Albanians and West Africans.

Ron Redmond, chief spokesman of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said the advertisement used “tricks” typical of the “the anti-asylum lobby,” such as “placing the word ’asylum-seeker’ systematically and repeatedly in close conjunction with words such as ’terrorist,’ ’criminal,’ ’rape,’ ’disease,’ ’fraud,’ ’bogus’ and so on.”

Switzerland hosted many of the refugees from former Yugoslavia during the 1990s, and attempts to curb the number of asylum seekers has been a continuing theme as it has been in some other European countries.

But opinion surveys indicated that many Swiss voters are now more concerned about the sluggish economy, rising health insurance costs and moves to cut Swiss pensions and postpone retirement age for social security.

In the 1995 elections, the People’s Party was still the smallest coalition partner, but it has made sizeable gains in recent years.

The party opposed Switzerland’s becoming a member of the United Nations and has rejected desires by other coalition parties to join the European Union. In the late 1990s, it accused the Swiss government of caving in to Jewish organisations seeking compensation from Swiss banks for families of Holocaust victims.