Swiss People's Party
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (October 2007) |
| Swiss People's Party | |
|---|---|
| Party Name in German | Schweizerische Volkspartei (SVP) |
| Party Name in French | Union Démocratique du Centre (UDC) |
| Party Name in Italian | Unione Democratica di Centro (UDC) |
| Party Name in Romansh | Partida Populara Svizra (PPS) |
| President | Toni Brunner (chair) |
| Members of the Swiss Federal Council | Samuel Schmid (without support from the party) |
| Founded | Merger of Agrarian Party and the Democratic Party |
| Headquarters | Brückfeldstrasse 18 CH-3001 Berne |
| Political Ideology | Conservatism, National conservatism, Populism, Economic liberalism, Agrarianism, Isolationism |
| European Affiliation | |
| International Affiliation | |
| Colours | Dark Green |
| Website | www.svp.ch |
See also: |
Politics & Government Swiss Federal Council |
The Swiss People's Party (SVP) also known as the Democratic Union of the Centre (UDC) is a political party in Switzerland.
Originally a centrist farmers' party, it embraced right-wing populism from the 1980s onwards under the unofficial leadership of Christoph Blocher, and in the 1990s to 2000s more than doubled its popular vote to 29%.
Contents |
[edit] History
It traces its roots to 1917, with the formation of a Farmers' Party in Berne. Similar parties followed in other cantons. These parties formed a loose federation that by 1929 was strong enough to get one of its leaders, Rudolf Minger, elected to the Federal Council. It has had a seat on the Federal Council since then. The party formally organised in 1936 as the Party of Farmers, Traders and Independents (German: Bauern-, Gewerbe- und Bürgerpartei [BGB]; French: Parti des Paysans, Artisans et Indépendants [PAI]). In 1971, it merged with the Democratic Parties of Glarus and Grisons (with roots dating to 1942) to become the SVP.
The SVP is traditionally strongest in German-speaking areas of Switzerland, but since the 2000s has gained significant support also in the French-speaking part. As of 2007, the party is strongest in Thurgau and Schwyz (both over 40%), and weakest in Fribourg, Valais and Ticino.[1]
[edit] Impact of 2007 elections
The Swiss system of government is based on a gentlemen's agreement called the magic formula, whereby seats in the 7-member Federal Council are assigned according to each major party's share of the latest general election. The SVP had been participating in this governing coalition since 1929, and owing to the remarkable increase in its popularity, had gained a second ministerial position in the Federal Council in 2003. This seat was taken by Christoph Blocher himself, the man generally credited with the party's electoral success. The November 2007 elections confirmed the SVP as the strongest party in Switzerland; a controversial and polarizing campaign, calling on voters explicitly to strengthen Blocher against alleged attempts to oust him from government, led to the SVP winning the largest share of the national vote of any party since 1919, gaining 62 of the 200 seats in the Parliament.
Exploiting the division in the SVP between the Blocher-led right and the more moderate centrists of the party, anti-Blocher MPs from other parties nominated Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf a moderate SVP parliamentarian to contest the seat in government that Blocher fully expected to reassume. Mrs Widmer-Schlumpf was duly elected, to serve as a second SVP minister besides her equally moderate colleague, Samuel Schmid. It was only the fourth time in history than an incumbent government member was not reelected.
Outraged at what they saw as virtual exclusion from the Federal Council despite having won the largest share of the popular vote, the SVP parliamentary party voted 60-to-2 to exclude Schmid and Widmer-Schlumpf from the parliamentary group, and to act henceforth as an opposition party within Parliament. However, Schmid and Widmer-Schlumpf then were still members of the SVP (although excluded from the meetings of the parliamentary group). Some SVP politicians called for Schmid's and Widmer-Schlumpf's exclusion from the party, yet it was not clear how this could be done. In the Swiss system, individuals are members of their respective cantonal party which in turn is a member of the national party. Exclusion would have to be carried out by the cantonal party, which Schmid's and Widmer-Schlumpfs parties in Bern and Graubünden weren't going to do, which led to some calling even for the removal of the whole Bern and Graubünden sections from the Swiss SVP.[2] [3]. On 1 June 2008, the SVP decided at national level to exclude the SVP of Graubünden. Widmer-Schlumpf is therefore no longer a member of the Swiss SVP, alongside with the whole Graubünden SVP. Samuel Schmid and other members of the Bern SVP have announced that they are going to leave the Swiss SVP and become members of a new party, although they will try first to convince the Bern SVP to leave the Swiss SVP as a whole.[4]
[edit] Ideology
- Further information: Right-wing populism
In May, 2007, SVP members, along with the Federal Democratic Union of Switzerland launched an initiative to amend the Swiss Federal Constitution to ban the construction of minarets. They claim that they do not oppose Muslims but consider the construction of minarets went against state secularism.[5] Ulrich Schlüer, member of the SVP and head of the initiative, lost his mandate in parliament in the 2007 federal election in spite of an overall gain of his party's popular support.
On 1 August 2007, the SVP launched a direct mail, print and outdoor advertising campaign at a national level to gather signatures supporting the "Federal Popular Initiative for the Deportation of Criminal Foreigners". An illustration was used in which three white sheep roaming on a Swiss-flag delimited area kick out a black sheep. The caption reads: "Bringing safety". In Geneva, the city council banned the outdoor campaign, and most of the outdoor posters already placed were destroyed. Thousands of the direct mail brochures with prepaid return postage were sent back without a signature to cause increased expenses to the campaign organizers.
[edit] Popular support
From the 1930s to the 1980s, the party had constantly held of the order of 10%-15% of the national vote, traditionally representing the interest of Swiss farmers.
Over the 1990s, the SVP changed its course radically towards a combination of nationalist populism and neo-liberalism, and has greatly increased its voter support, at the expense of both the far-right fringe and the major parties of the centre, gaining of the order of 5% on each. Popular vote more than doubled from 12% in 1991 to 29% in 2007, at the same time resulting in a polarisation on the left, strengthening the Swiss Green Party in particular.[citation needed]
In the 2003 elections, its ascendancy to the strongest party in the parliament led it to demand an additional seat on the Federal Council at the expense of the Christian Democrats (now the weakest of the parties in the governing coalition) and threatened to go into opposition if it did not get it[6]. Finally, Christoph Blocher was elected to the council, replacing Ruth Metzler-Arnold.
In 2003, the party held 55 out of the 200 seats in the Swiss National Council (the lower chamber of the Swiss parliament), 8 out of the 46 seats in the upper chamber, and 2 out of the 7 seats on the Swiss Federal Council (the collective executive body). By 2005, it held 23.3% of the seats in the Swiss Cantonal parliaments but only occupied 15.8% of the positions within the Swiss Cantonal governments (data from the "BADAC" index, weighted with the population and number of seats). An explanation for this gap may be that many members of the cantonal party sections are young and therefore under-represented in the corpus of the more experienced personnel generally included within governments.
With the further rise in support from 27% in 2003 to 29% in the 2007 election (62 out of the 200 seats)[7], the party matched the historic high-water mark of the Free Democratic Party in 1919. Also in the 2007 elections, the far-right nationalist Swiss Democrats lost their last seat in parliament, their electorate having been almost fully absorbed into the ranks of the SVP.
[edit] Notes
- ^ http://www.parlament.ch/homepage/in-statistiken-tabellen/in-st-staerke-der-fraktionen-nach-kantonen.htm
- ^ "Gerangel um SVP-Bundesräte", NZZ Online, 2008-02-20. Retrieved on 2008-03-17. (German)
- ^ "Widmer-Schlumpf schweigt eisern", 20 Minuten, 2008-03-14. Retrieved on 2008-03-17. (German)
- ^ "Schmid sucht eine neue politische Heimat", Tages-Anzeiger, 2008-06-03. Retrieved on 2008-06-06. (German)
- ^ Imogen Foulkes. "Swiss move to ban minarets", BBC, May 29, 2007.
- ^ "Swiss Right in Political Avalanche", BBC News, 2003-10-20. Retrieved on 2008-01-10. (English)
- ^ "Nationalratswahlen Übersicht Schweiz 2007", Bundesamt für Statistik, 2007-10-22. Retrieved on 2008-01-10. (German)
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- svp.ch (homepage) in German and French
- Website containing games supporting SVP ideology (in German and French)
- "Political Map of Switzerland" "Hermann, M. und Leuthold, H. (2003): Die politische Landkarte des Nationalrats 1999-2003. In: Tages-Anzeiger, 11. Oktober, 2003, Zürich."
- svp-politik.ch (critical website) in German
|
|||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||
