Wednesday’s poll has ensured that Switzerland is being run by the most right-wing government in its post-war history, after Christoph Blocher, the controversial anti-immigrant populist, won a seat in the country’s Cabinet.
In a move that is likely to doom Switzerland’s lingering aspirations to join the European Union, and could usher in harsh anti-asylum laws, the Swiss Parliament voted to elect Blocher, the leader of the far-right Swiss People’s Party (SVP), to its ruling council.
Blocher scraped in by a mere five votes. It was the narrowest of margins, following a morning of high drama in the Swiss capital, Bern.
”I promise you that I will do everything to earn your trust,” the 63-year-old billionaire industrialist said in his acceptance speech, which was accompanied by raucous celebrations from his supporters in a nearby hotel. Grinning broadly, he hugged several party colleagues. ”I accept my election. I hope that with God’s help it will work out for the best,” he added.
Blocher’s elevation to the seven-seat Cabinet spells the end, after 44 years, of Switzerland’s cosy system of political consensus: the country’s four main political parties, including the People’s Party, have traditionally shared power in a grand coalition.
Blocher had earlier threatened to go into opposition if the other parties failed to give him a seat in the government. The SVP already has one Cabinet seat but demanded another after winning Switzerland’s general election in October following the most explicitly foreigner-bashing campaign in the country’s history.
Blocher was elected with 121 votes, unseating Ruth Metzler, the incumbent Christian People’s Party Justice Minister, who got 116. The result came after three rounds of voting —and marked the first time in 131 years that a sitting member of the country’s Cabinet had been kicked out.
Observers said there was no doubt that Switzerland had moved to the right, and pointed out that the other new Cabinet member, Hans-Rudolf Merz, from the Free Liberal Party, was also an arch conservative, especially on fiscal matters.
”This is the most right-wing government in years, as well as the most male, and perhaps the toughest as well. It is a government of powerful men,” said Johann Aeschlimann, a leading political commentator.
Blocher, however, was ”an intelligent man” and not a ”right-wing nut”, and he was likely to try and work within the existing system, Aeschlimann said. He added: ”He will try to compromise.”
But there was little doubt this week that the election of Blocher, an avowed enemy of European integration, now means there is virtually no prospect of Switzerland joining the EU in the next decade.
Tough anti-asylum laws are already being considered by the Swiss Parliament, but they could now be beefed up by Blocher who, in the run-up to the election, blamed Switzerland’s problems on ”shameless asylum seekers” and a ”brutal Albanian Mafia”.
In the past Blocher has campaigned against allowing Swiss soldiers to take part in foreign peacekeeping operations, as well as against Swiss membership of the United Nations (a referendum he eventually lost).
Privately, diplomats have expressed ”shock” at Blocher’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. His election, and the rise of his isolationist party, is set to ensure that Switzerland remains a tiny island in the heart of the EU when it expands next year to 25 countries.
Blocher, the self-appointed ”voice of the people”, emerged on the national stage during the early 1990s with his campaign against forging closer links with Europe. He remains committed to his belief that it would be a fatal mistake for Switzerland —which has a population of seven million — to cede its cherished independence to ”bureaucrats in Brussels”.
He gained international notoriety with his vocal campaign against foreign pressure — he called it blackmail — on the asset-rich Swiss banks to urge them to pay compensation to the descendants of Holocaust victims.
He is an outspoken critic of asylum seekers in a country where one in five of the population is non-Swiss, and opposes government moves to make it easier for second-generation immigrants to become Swiss.
His critics maintain he is a right-wing extremist and a covert anti-Semite who stirs up anti-immigrant feelings.
In an interview with The Guardian last week, however, he claimed his policies on asylum were not very different from those of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, adding that he had nothing against foreigners.
Before the October parliamentary elections, the SVP ran full-page newspaper advertisements criticising ”pampered criminals” and ”shameless asylum seekers”, implicitly linking the newcomers to an increase in murders, rapes and other violence. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees criticised the
ads as ”nakedly anti-asylum” and ”atrocious”. — Â