Excursion: Swissminiatur at Melide on Lago Lugano
Swiss politics 101
The parliament building in Bern has been under renovation since I moved here, so the photos I have of it involve a lot of scaffolding. This is a photo of a model at Swissminiatur, an amusement park in Canton Ticino with 1:25 scale models of some of the most sightworthy things in Switzerland (and at least one why-is-that-here). Yes, trains as well and some dated luxury sports cars.
The reason I bring this up is that another controversial parliamentary election campaign season is upon us. Over the course of the next few days, I'll try to briefly summarize what makes it controversial, in a style appropriate for my own short attention span. This exercise is partly (maybe even mostly) for my own benefit and I'm having to inform myself about this topic. If it bores you, come back in a couple of days, I expect to be done by then.
Some basic information about the structure of the government:
- 7 members of der Bundesrat = Federal Council (elected by the members of the Parliament)
- 1 Bundesrat member is elected President each year (rotating position)
- 200 members of the National Council in the Parliament (Nationalrat)
- about 36,000 people are represented by each MP
- 46 senators: members of the Council of States (Ständerat) in the Parliament
- 4 main political groups
- 25 percent of voters support SVP - Swiss People's Party - right/far-right
- 21 percent of voters support SP - Social Democratic Party - left
- 16 percent of voters support FDP - Free Democratic Party - center-right (liberal)
- 16 percent of voters support CVP - Christian Democratic People's Party - center
- 11 percent of voters support the Greens - green/left
- 11 percent of voters support the rest
Notice the big chunk carried by the rightwing party. It wasn't like that until 1999. Tomorrow: the Magic Formula and the increasing popularity of the right. Link to the website of the Swiss Parliament (options for Deutsch, Français, Italiano and to some extent, English).
20061103 Canon PowerShot S410
10 comments:
ah I vageuly rememeber passing this in Lugano - our coach driver said we'd see the Matterhorn - we were listening to him as intensely as I just read most of your post - boring a bit but informative anyway.
I think the SVP is in danger of looking just plain ridiculous with it's advertising campaigns, though. (I posted some thoughts here
oooh...are you going to post about the sheep posters?? I've been debating whether or not to post those on my blog. I never intended for it to be politically charged blog. yet, the SVP campaign is currently part of daily life in Zurich and is on a lot of people's minds these days--especially auslanders like us. not sure yet if I want to invite controversy to my little light hearted picture-a-day thing....I was wondering if you or Richard would mention it.
This is so pretty scenery,Z!
Gerald: Well, I'm going to plod on, I think.
Richard: They seem to have been that way for a while, but the fact is, they're getting a lot of votes and I'd like to know why.
AinZ: Yes, that's the idea. I went back and forth on writing about it, but given the amount of time I've spent on the topic and the fact that with so much international coverage, many of my readers probably have heard of it, it seemed the thing to do. I remember when the second seat was taken by the SVP/Blocher -- I was still in the US and wondering how it would be for me as a non-white foreigner in CH. I found many things to be quite different from the dire stories I had read and that was encouraging.
Beetle: The landscape around the park does make for a very nice backdrop for the models!
that's a great looking miniature!!!
@z - Even in my stay here I have seen a deterioration in what you could call social behaviour. Very mild compared with other countries I've lived in but noticeable nevertheless. (petty vandalism of bus shelters is one of my benchmarks). Mostly of course the concerns are over nastier things than bus shelter vandalism and I'm not going to comment on whether foreigners are causing all the problems. If you are Swiss, and take pride in the good old days when none of these problems existed (so people tell me) then I don't think it's too difficult to see why the SVP, rightly or wrongly, is popular. I think Switzerland for the Swiss can be a very persuasive rallying call - it also doesn't necessarily mean rampant racism. I suppose from this you think I might be sympathetic to the SVP, but that's another thing altogether, and I can't vote anyway as you know.
Richard: I find that the campaign tactics and what appear to be the core ideals of the SVP range from the inane to the insane to the profane. The thing is, however, that the particular measures that they actually propose on the ballots make sense and are not as incendiary (as far as I see it, I still have much to read *sigh*). I hope I'm not missing something huge, but it seems to me that these proposals could have been made by one or two of the other parties, using a more moderate means to achieve the same or almost the same thing. Who doesn't want to be though on crime and the abuse of resources? But, it has to be done in a fair and even-handed manner, and that's where SVP appears suspect.
@z - agree - that's the point I was trying to make on my other blog, that the ad campaigns were in danger of just ridicule. However the problem is that people will jump on bandwagons for the wrong reasons. A party taken as right-wing will attract some extremists for sure. They may get more than they bargained for. God forbid it could be like in the UK where no-one knows anything about policies, but just goes by what the tabloids tell them- Saves the tiresome obligation to think for themselves. Congratulations on attempting to unravel it all
A wonderful looking building.
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