Word: svp
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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When he was elected to the Swiss Cabinet in December 2003, Christoph Blocher celebrated his triumph with a glass of white wine. Not only did the billionaire industrialist get a seat on the seven-member Federal Council - Switzerland's executive government - but his right-wing Swiss People's Party (SVP), won a landslide victory in the polls with 29% of the vote this year...
...surprising twist of events the two bodies, which constitute the parliament, voted to oust Blocher, 67, who became Justice Minister during his Cabinet tenure and generated widespread criticism for his lack of collegiality, confrontational style and divisive politics. In his place the legislators elected his more moderate SVP colleague, Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, who was not even in the running for the Cabinet seat...
...accounts, Blocher, the most outspoken and controversial figure of the SVP, a populist rural party that has morphed into a national force, was not a team player. Throughout his regime he often acted in an "authoritarian way," says Thomas Fleiner, professor of Constitutional and Administrative Law at the Federalism Institute in Fribourg, even going as far as trying to "exclude members of his own party from various committees because they had not followed the party's official line...
...seven. I got my Swiss passport only two years ago," says Kocakir Abdurrahman, 37, a Turkish taxi driver in Zurich. Abdurrahman said he had mailed his ballot last week, in his first vote as a Swiss citizen - for the Social Democrats. Explaining his choice, he says: "The SVP is racist...
...SVP says their target is not all foreigners, but those who commit serious crimes like rape and murder; they point out that about 70% of those in Swiss prisons are foreign-born residents. Schlüer says that the waves of African and Balkan refugees during the past two decades are evidence enough of Switzerland's openness. "Integration is a success," he says. Yet it is largely because of its anti-immigrant stance that the party's ranks have soared; the SVP has nearly doubled its members of parliament since 1995, from 29 to 55 this year. That number could...