LETTER FROM GENEVA
The photo on the left is crossed out with a large red cross, as a sign of refusal. We see a group of black men squatting, parked in a refugee center on the Italian island of Lampedusa, the front line of the migratory drama in the Mediterranean. In the image on the right, accompanied by a large green checkmark for validation, three blond children and their fair-skinned parents, sitting on a soft green alpine meadow, paced not far away by peaceful cows. Below the two illustrations, this profession of faith, in large letters: “No to a Switzerland with ten million inhabitants. »
The Alpine country currently has nearly nine million, after two decades of strong demographic growth. Allegedly threatened by “uncontrolled immigration”, Switzerland would be on the verge of losing both its soul and its legendary security. It would also risk having to share its prosperity with ever-increasing numbers of new foreign arrivals.
Hammered in an “all households” – an electoral advertising brochure traditionally distributed to all private mailboxes in the country – shortly before the federal elections on Sunday October 22, the popular slogan achieved its objective. Its creator, the Democratic Union of the Center (UDC, nationalist right), further strengthened its hold on the Swiss political landscape with 27.9% of the votes (+ 2.3 points compared to the 2019 elections), winning 61 seats (nine additional) of deputies in the National Council, the lower house of the Swiss Parliament. Its first pursuer, the Swiss Socialist Party, up slightly, is well behind at almost 10 points (18.3%).
The name of the SVP in the original language, German, gives a more precise idea of its orientation than that used in French. The Schweizerische Volkspartei would in fact be more logically translated as “Swiss People’s Party”, which corresponds better to its ideological orientation: categorical refusal of rapprochement with the European Union (EU), sovereignism, obsession with immigration, promotion of values traditional family.
“Making believe that there are two classes of human beings”
There “foreign population” (a third of the population was born outside Switzerland, a figure which rises to 50% in the metropolises of Geneva and Zurich) is held responsible for all the (rare) ills of the country, whose economy is flourishing. However, its overwhelming majority is made up of EU nationals who benefit from free movement, and are easily recruited in an overheated labor market which could not function without them. Foreign residents would also cause highway and rail congestion, soaring housing prices, “the chaos of asylum and Swiss minority children in schools”, as stated in “all households” of the UDC.
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