Far-right party `loses ground` in Swiss poll
Downturn in support for Swiss People`s Party, which campaigned to stop influx of immigrants, partial results show.
The right-wing Swiss People`s Party (SVP), which campaigned to stop an influx of immigrants, appears to have seen a downturn in support in parliamentary elections as voters shifted their support to smaller new parties.
The SVP was down 2.1 percentage points compared with the last election in 2007, but was still on track to be the biggest party with 26.8 per cent of the vote, according to a national projection based on partial results and provided by Swiss television.
In second place, the centre-left Social Democrats were seen winning 18.9 per cent of the vote on Sunday, 0.6 percentage points below their showing in 2007.
The SVP had sparked controversy during previous polls, with posters of three white sheep kicking a black sheep off the Swiss flag leading a UN anti-racism expert to call for the withdrawal of the images.
This year, it has opted for an image of a crowd marching across the Swiss flag, with the slogan: "That`s enough. Stop mass immigration."
The SVP was also responsible for the referendum which banned Islamic minarets in Switzerland.
Now their plans for a referendum to deport foreign criminals will bring Switzerland in direct conflict with EU migration laws.
Speaking to Al Jazeera, Professor Dr Francis Chaneval, from the University of Zurich, said: "The minaret initiative didn`t really harm Swiss economics, but this inititaive, the migration initiative, will harm Swiss economics and you rarely see the Swiss doing harm to their own economics. That would be a real surprise to me."
Alain Bittar, a bookstore owner, said: "The population is ageing and Switzerland needs foreigners because it is them who are going to guarantee their future retirement and a certain stability in terms of taxes."
The party had hoped to win the backing of some 30 percent of the voters, slightly more than its record performance in 2007, by exploiting fears that immigration is hurting the Alpine country`s high standard of living.
Despite Switzerland`s low unemployment rate of 2.8 percent, the party has struck a chord with voters who fear a financial crisis in the euro zone could lead to a new flood of immigration, threatening jobs and leading to wage pressure.
The SVP has blamed foreigners, who make up some 22 percent of the 7.9 million population, for rising rents, crowded public transport and even rising electricity bills.
Last week the party said it had gathered the 100,000 signatures needed to call a referendum on curbing the number of immigrants by reintroducing quotas. This might contravene agreements Switzerland has with the European Union on the free movement of people.
The SVP has won referendums in recent years to ban the building of new minarets and to expel immigrants convicted of serious crimes, but its policies have angered some Swiss people.
The party`s mascot, a goat named Zottel, was kidnapped and painted black, in protest against its anti-immigration stance.
Christoph Blocher, credited with transforming the SVP from a small, rural party to a conservative grouping with national appeal over the last 20 years, looked unlikely to win a seat in the upper house on Sunday, early results showed.
"We need more solidarity than ever before because people are living in a financial crisis, so I think (people) should vote for an open and ecological Switzerland," Henriette Stebner told Reuters TV as she cast her vote in Geneva.
Apart from migration, campaign issues included the strong Swiss franc and waning confidence in nuclear power in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, which helped the Green Liberal Party (GLP) to increase its vote to 5.5 percent.
The BDP, founded to support popular Finance Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf after she was expelled from the SVP, also ate into the traditional parties` share of the vote.
The success of her party -- which came from nowhere to win 5.4 percent of the vote -- will bolster her bid to stay in the seven-seat, multi-party cabinet which will be selected by parliament on Dec. 14.
If Widmer-Schlumpf can keep her seat, the SVP`s losses will undermine its case for an extra seat in cabinet, in which the three largest parties have traditionally held two seats each, while the fourth largest has just one seat.
In the past other parties have banded together to try to sideline the SVP in the consensus-based cabinet.
But SVP leader Toni Brunner said his party would push for a second seat: "I don`t know whether Switzerland can allow the strongest force in the country to be excluded," he told Swiss television.
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