Populist right tops Swiss elections
The SVP’s election campaign focused on its favourite theme: the fight against “mass immigration” and the prospect of the Swiss population reaching 10 million.
Its “New normal?” social media adverts, spotlighting criminal cases perpetrated by foreigners, plunged into a world of bloodied knives, hooded criminals, fists, bruised faces and frightened women.
It also launched a war on “cancel culture” and what it calls “gender terror and woke madness”.
“The situation in Switzerland is serious: we have mass immigration, we have big problems with people seeking asylum. The security situation is no longer the same as before,” Thomas Aeschi, head of the SVP parliamentary group, told AFP.
“There are many people in Switzerland who fear the situation will get worse.”
The SVP — which is strongly anti-EU — fiercely defends Switzerland’s long-standing military neutrality and feels Bern pushed the principle too far by matching EU sanctions on Russia over its war in Ukraine.
Aeschi said the SVP “wants good relations with the European Union but what we don’t want is an agreement where Switzerland must do what the EU says”.
Those dirty Russians!
