The Swiss Choice

The Swiss Choice

The UDC and the Diffusion of Xenophobia as an Electoral Tool

by Ernesto Castaneda

On October 21^st an election took place in Switzerland. Or so claims the press: I was in Lausanne, Switzerland on that day, and I had a hard time finding voting booths or any other signs of what they now call in Mexico “la fiesta de la democracia” - people in the streets, lining up to vote, fingers marked, people glued to the TV or the radio, general expectation. The Swiss friend I went to visit in Lausanne told me that many people voted by mail days before the official Election Day so the only thing left to do was to continue with every day life. So my sister, her boyfriend and I along with some international friends enjoyed the beauty of Switzerland. Still as foreigners the knowledge that UDC was getting voted as we walked the streets, made us feel less welcomed and took away some of the real beauty of the incredible landscapes in the wine region next to Lausanne and of out of the historic cities I visited.

The election generated a lot of national and international attention because of a controversial campaign run by the right wing People's Party UDC/SVP (Union Démocratique du Centre/ Schweizerische Volkspartei). During the campaign, the party either showed its leader and symbol Christoph Blocher, as my sister said "he looks like an inoffensive loving grandpa", unfortunately he seems to want to follow the career path of Jean-Marie Le Pen as one can see in another poster from his party depicting three white sheep kicking out a black sheep.

The open aim of the campaign was to mobilize people with the argument that, if elected, the UDC/SVP would change the laws so that immigrant criminals would be deported. Not a terrible idea -it is hard to be against that very particular point. Many countries do it or worse including making non-resident criminals spend their sentence in prison and then when they come out, deporting them. And in some cases, the prisoners may prefer to be in a prison at home than abroad where they may face more harassment if they are in the minority.

Maybe just to sound convincing, or maybe out of conviction and honesty, the party ran an overall xenophobic campaign against new immigrants specially from African and Muslim countries, who supposedly threaten the spirit of the country. Although once you start with one group it is hard to stop there.

The UDC even provided some free video games in which the party’s pet - a goat called Zottel- had to make sure to patrol the Swiss borders and prevent black sheep from crossing into Switzerland’s border and to prevent hands of color to obtain Swiss passports. The game was available at http://www.zottel-game.com/ one had to see it to believe how openly xenophobic the game was. But in order to avoid further scrutiny the well-programmed video games were removed by the party after winning the elections. Unfortunately there was no GAME OVER.

Opposition

Fortunately, many in Switzerland critized the UDC campaign and the Zottel game. Many blogs, mainly in swiss-german, strongly criticized the idea behind the game. Some blogs provided parodies and someone went as far as to program (a somewhat violent) videogame where a Swiss citizen (or the player) kicks Blocher out of the country (available at http://www.bkanal.ch/content/bock-buster-game/).

On a somewhat more serious note an organization called "Moutons de Garde" (guardian sheeps) has mixed the symbol of the U.N. peacekeppers, the blue helmets, with the idea of the black and white sheeps. The "blue sheeps" are Swiss citizens whose aim is to render political debates (moraly) acceptable (nous "souhaitons que les débats politiques redeviennent acceptables") and they have engaged in different actions including a petition, a Facebook group, and direct political activism (http://moutonsdegarde.ch/mdg/view.php?p=4&lang=fr).

A Multicultural, Multilingual Society

Switzerland is a federation of different independent cantons with their own languages (French, Swiss German, and Italian), governments and traditions. Throughout Switzerland many of the UDC/SVP posters were vandalized or marked with graffiti. Given their racist premises many hoped and were almost sure that the party would do badly. But the amount of attention the party was able to garner, along with the claims that the “UDC answered the reality of many Swiss people”, as one car mechanic told the Genève Tribune (10/23/2007), resulted in a landslide victory for the UDC/SVP, which extended its popularity to the French part of Switzerland, la Suisse Romande, which includes the cities of Lausanne and Geneva. This are proved decisive in the national growth of the UDC.But as Mina Bali, a Swiss working at the U.N. told the Tribue de Geneve, “It is incredible that a nationalist party got the first place in an international city like Geneva, which houses many UN and international offices and bureaucrats” (TDG 10/23/2007). Indeed, Geneva has a total population of 444,285, of which 276,168 are Swiss residents and 168,117 foreign residents in 2007 (Naef 2007), an extremely high proportion of foreigners and there were no routine problems or conflicts. This is indeed a global city (both in its cosmopolitan sense, as well as in that of Saskia Sassen).

But Geneva has been losing population due to the exit of foreign residents. Maybe because of the anti-immigrant sentiment generated in this political campaign, maybe because they cannot find jobs as some professional friends, or maybe because of other reasons, but in any case many immigrants are leaving Geneva. In 2007, 16,752 people arrived while 18,984 left - a net loss of 2,232 people. Taking into account new births, Geneva still has 1,021 people less than the previous year. And government officials are worried about this. To complicate things, there are more than 645,000 Swiss living abroad, a portion in which sent their ballots from overseas (Swissinfo 2007).

Further pointing to the complex Swiss reality, at the same time that the UDC did so well, Ricardo Lumengo, who was born in Angola and came to Switzerland as a refugee in 1982 when he was 20 years old, became the first black person elected to the national parliament.

Swiss Political System

The Swiss government has three levels: the federal, the canton, and the commune. The executive power is exercised by a Federal Council formed by seven members. The symbolic Presidency of the Council rotates amongst the members and lasts one year, while the other members are in charge of different ministries. The Federal Councilors are elected for four years by the Federal Assembly (it is common to be re-elected) and this council generally represents the support that each party has amongst the population. Thus Blocher (UDC) will likely stay in the council as a vice-president this coming year, and it would be his turn to serve as President the following year.

A Record Year (?)

The local morning newspaper claimed that participation in this election broke a record in the recent years although information from the Swiss Federal Statics Office shows otherwise, participation has been in a strong decline.

The right-wing UDC won a record number of seats (62 out of the national council’s 200). Indeed a record in terms of relative gain for a party the UDC. Although the Green party also gained much terrain. What is also true is that the UDC broke an overall campaign record in campaign spending, spending more than all the other parties together. Some of the funding sources are not very clear. It also helps that Blocher has made millions with his chemicals company.

(source Swissinfo.ch)

The President of the UDC Ueli Maurer attributes the great victory of his party to its three main policy proposals:

1) Not joining the European Union

2) Reducing taxes

3) Fighting against national security threats (Le Matin:2 10/22/2007);

A libertarian and neutral agenda, very compatible with the Swiss tradition, as well as some of the neo-liberal recipes that have swept the world.

Yet

As Swiss sociologist, and friend, Andreas Koller points out, "As for the election results: it is certainly not something that makes you proud... But, on the other hand, given the huge campaign (with as much money as all other parties together), it is actually surprising and reassuring that the national-conservative party (UDC/SVP) gained only 2 percent! And a total of about 29 percent. Something FAR AWAY from an absolute majority. In addition, I assume that many other countries have about the same 30-percent potential of "unreason." (...) Last, but not least, one should not forget that these 29 percent actually only represent less than 15 percent of the eligible Swiss voters (voter participation was only 49%). Not that I want to neglect the problem of the gains of the SVP. But I think it is not such a big deal as some of the international media see it" (Koller, personal communication 10/23/2007).

Indeed if one looks at the resulting composition of the parliament one looks at an almost perfect distribution of seats amongst the political spectrum. The advantage/risk of having a multi-party system is that more specific preferences get reflected in government.

Agenda Setting and Government Kidnapping

The problem arises when one of the radical parties, as minoritarian as it may be, gets to set the agenda, specially with exclusionary, xenophobic, ethnocentric and racist claims. It is a historical fact that despite never having a majoritarian support as a party because of a charismatic leader the Social Democrats in Germany were able to set the agenda and capture the government. Not that this will happen in Switzerland soon. But the opposition is already having a hard time controling the ambitions of Blocher and the UDC to dictatate policy.

UDC calls for DNA Tests

In a clear example of policy convergence (not to say copycat), the new UDC government has already proposed to ask for DNA exams from prospective immigrants under family reunification clauses. The genetic test would only be required from immigrants from certain countries applying to rejoin families in Switzerland, including Turkey and Kosovo. In contrast with France, in the Swiss case, the immigrants will have to pay for the test (cost estimated between CHF 600 and 1,000 or between 500 and 900 U.S. dollars as of November 18, 2007). The Tribune de Genève reports that, “The goal of DNA testing in cases of immigration applicants is to root out cases of possible fraud, such as the use of false birth certificates”(November 5th, 2007) (see entry on the proposed DNA tests in France).

Micro-Sociological Implications

What we have discussed so far mainly lies at the level of political discourse and macro-social political analysis but what happens regarding everyday interactions by people living in Switzerland? To give just one grounded example I will quote my own sister at length.

The Fight over Language: Monica's Experience

"I enrolled in the Master of Advanced Studies in Nutritional Science at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zürich) because I fulfilled the language requirements of the program (90% English and 10%German). It was advertised that all the lectures were going to be in English, and that German would be only used in special occasions where invited speakers would not be able to give their lectures in English. This policy has been recently implemented since the ETH is interested in becoming international and to increase its existing insertion in the Anglophone academic world. Many of the ETH researchers publish their research in American and British journals. They also use English materials in their courses."

"On the first day of classes, I arrived at my first class where there were around 60 students. I sat at the end of one of the front rows. Suddenly, the Professor started the class in German! I was quite shocked. After introducing herself, she asked if anybody had problems understanding German. My German was good enough to understand that, so I raised my hand. Few seconds later, I looked around and I realized that I was the only one who had raised a hand. So the professor asked the rest of the students whether it would be a problem to give the lecture in English. To my surprise, I heard several students shouting that they wanted the class in German. I was there all alone against all these people in my first day as a student in the ETH! After this reaction, the lecturer asked me again if it wouldn’t be possible for me to follow the class in German. And I replied that my German skills (my fourth language) were not good enough yet to follow an Immunology course. So once again, the Professor asked who was really against having the lecture in English. But interestingly this time, nobody complained. So it was decided that the class would be given in English."

"However, I could feel that there were some people in the classroom who were unhappy about the situation, maybe understandably so, since the English skills of many were not as strong and having the class in English made it so much harder for them. Swiss-German was the mother tongue of many but not all since there were also Indian, French, Canadian, American and German international students at the classes in my program; as well as students from the French and Italian-speaking Swiss regions. Many students felt it was unfair that they had to take courses in English. One of the lectures was indeed given in German because the Professor will switch to English until next year. There was another class that was given partially in German because it was also offered to bachelor students, and there were several bachelor students who were complaining that they weren’t able to understand English. And according to its own policies, the ETH could only implant lectures in English when the classes were only for Master or PHD students. So I will try to take these courses next semester."

"The same question over the language of instruction ensued in each of my eight courses, and any time a new visiting lecturer came to give a lecture. In some courses, professors would switch after every month or so in order for a specialist to cover a new section of the course syllabus. A month later after starting my classes, a new lecturer arrived and when the issue of preferred teaching-language was raised, there were a lot of hands raised when the professor asked who was against giving the lecture in English. But this time there were also many more people who were in favor of having the class in English, I was no longer the only one raising her hand. I guess that after I spoke up other people felt more confident about asking for the class to be offered in English as it was announced to be" (Monica Castaneda).

Boundary Formation

What we see in Monica’s story is that the class had divided itself along language lines. The debate about language of instruction had put into question the hegemony of Swiss-German in Zurich (see Pierre Bourdieu’s discussion on language and power). At the same time that it further marked the foreigners as such and thus reinforced social boundaries between natives and foreigners. The students I talked to seemed to be extremely conscious about these differences and tensions, especially given the very recent anti-foreigner political campaigns and electoral results. Not surprisingly the resulting friendships also happened along language lines, even when all could make an effort to talk in third neutral language. Normally, each felt more confortable speaking in the mother tongue or when not possible the available lingua franca nowadays English. The professors, researchers and industry guests were happy to lecture in English, many of their slides had already been written in English for international conferences and meetings. Yet not all the students had the same level of English and were indeed affected by English being used in class, readings and mainly exams.

Was this micro-social dynamic similar to that experienced by long time Zurich residents? Many old-time middle age Zurich citizens now see former "traditional" neighborhoods being mainly inhabited by immigrants. In relatively rare, yet very visible cases, these neighborhoods tend to be correlated with red light districts, and higher sale of drugs and consumption of alcohol (even if manily by citizens). Who benefits if instead of letting be and letting time pass until immigrants can fully incorporate into their new society, someone starts pointing that foreigners pose a threat to society?

References

Heute

www.heute-online.ch

Naef, Laurence. “La Population du Canton Diminue.” Tribune de Genève. Octobre 23, 2007.

Tribune de Genève. “UDC calls for DNA tests.” English portal. November 5^th, 2007. http://www.tdg.ch/

Moutons de Garde
http://moutonsdegarde.ch/mdg/view.php?p=7&lang=fr

Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_People%27s_Party

Swiss Info

http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/elections/index.html
http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/front/detail/Swiss_are_not_sheep_like_racists.html?siteSect=105&sid=8403318&cKey=1194622251000&ty=st