Word: svp
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Gallen, a conservative provincial town one hour east of Zurich, the right-wing Swiss People's Party (SVP) had its campaign posters - bearing the caricatured features of a black man and the slogan the SWISS ARE THE NEGROES OF SWITZERLAND - all ready to go. But amid accusations of racism, party officials withdrew the posters from their campaign for national parliamentary elections...
...Katumba, 32, is right - and not everyone in Switzerland is happy about it. The dramatic increase in the country's foreign-born population is fueling the popularity of the SVP, the furthest to the right of the major parties. Some 20% of Switzerland's population is foreign-born, one of the highest percentages in Europe, and last year more than 26,000 asylum seekers and refugees came to the country - costing the government j590 million. As it has in the past, the SVP is making immigration (legal and otherwise) a hot-button issue. But this time around the party...
Some here say the country not only can stay out but should. The populist Swiss People's Party (SVP), a longtime proponent of isolationism that has a strong following in some rural areas, argues that U.N. membership would jeopardize Switzerland's cherished neutrality, sovereignty and democracy and turn it into a lackey of bigger, more powerful nations. As a member state, the party warns, Switzerland could be forced by the Security Council to take part in international sanctions and military actions. "We would also lose the right to have our own foreign policy and diplomatic relations," says Ulrich Schl...
...latest polls show U.N. supporters with a big lead. Last June voters approved a controversial initiative allowing Swiss troops on peacekeeping missions to carry weapons, despite SVP's cries that such a move would compromise the country's neutrality. The government is hoping the same open-minded attitude will lead to a "yes" vote on March 3. "If it doesn't," Nordmann says, "the world would not understand why we insist on keeping our head buried in the sand." Given Switzerland's geography, that is particularly hard...