Word: svp
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...Blocher's tactful departure is not resonating within the SVP. In a terse statement posted by the country's leading party on its website, it accuses legislators of retaliating against Blocher out of "jealousy and frustration over our successes." And because the lawmakers replaced Blocher with a moderate member of his own party, who might try to blunt the sharper edges of her predecessor's hard-line policies rather than toe the official stance, the SVP has threatened to leave the government and form an opposition party. The move would undermine Switzerland's 50-year-old "magic formula" under which...
...However, political analysts like Lutz believe the talk of opposition is pure braggadocio. "The SVP has been threatening and bullying politicians and population for a long time," he says...
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...