Swiss democrats
| Swiss democrats | |
|---|---|
|
|
| Establishment date: | 1961 (as NA) |
| Presidium: | Rudolf Keller |
| Vice Presidium: | Michel Dupont Christoph Spiess |
| Secretary General: | Adrian powder |
| Members: | 1,300 (as of 2019) |
| Share of voters: | 0.13% (as of: National Council election 2019 ) |
| National Council: | - |
| Council of States: | - |
| Cantonal parliaments: | 0 seats (as of March 2020) |
| Party structure: | 15 cantonal parties |
| Groupings: | Young Swiss Democrats (JSD) |
| Website: | www.schweizer-demokrats.ch |
The Swiss Democrats (SD) ( French Démocrates Suisses (DS) , Italian Democratici Svizzeri (DS) , Romansh Democrats Svizzers (DS) ) is a right-wing populist and nationalist political party in Switzerland . The party was represented in the National Council from 1967 to 2007 . The Swiss democrats fight for Swiss neutrality and national identity and reject Switzerland's rapprochement with the European Union .
program
The SD are a nationalist and conservative party with strong isolationist tendencies. Since it was founded under the name of National Action against Foreign Immigration of People and Homeland , the struggle against “foreign infiltration” and against “overpopulation of the Swiss living space” - as the current phrase goes - has been at the center of the party's program.
The self-declared main goal of the SD is to maintain “Switzerland as a free, viable, neutral and independent nation of will ” in its form as a federation of states with “the people having a large say on all political levels”.
According to the SD, “the large number of non- assimilable asylum seekers and foreigners from exotic countries” changes the “national character” of the Swiss population, which is why mass immigration must be stopped. She advocates tightening the Lex Koller , which restricts the acquisition of real estate by foreigners (“home sales”). It also fights for the preservation or increase of Switzerland's economic independence from abroad, for the safeguarding of social welfare (especially the first pillar, see three-pillar system: The social welfare of Switzerland ) and for law and order .
In the 1970s, then President Valentin Oehen tried for the first time to focus the party more on ecological issues - still under the name of National Action Against Foreign Immigration and Homeland . The demand for greater protection of nature and the environment, the “natural foundations of life”, has come to the fore again in recent years. In the 2007 election campaign the slogan “national - environmentally conscious - social” adorned the SD's campaigns. She sees a close connection between Switzerland as a pronounced immigration country and the environmental problems that have arisen.
history
| year | % | Seats |
|---|---|---|
| 1967 | 0.63% | 1 |
| 1971 | 3.20% | 4th |
| 1975 | 2.47% | 2 |
| 1979 | 1.32% | 2 |
| 1983 | 2.94% | 4th |
| 1987 | 2.54% | 3 |
| 1991 | 3.39% | 5 |
| 1995 | 3.13% | 3 |
| 1999 | 1.84% | 1 |
| 2003 | 0.96% | 1 |
| 2007 | 0.54% | 0 |
| 2011 | 0.20% | 0 |
| 2015 | 0.12% | 0 |
| 2019 | 0.13% | 0 |
In 1961, today's Swiss Democrats were founded in Winterthur as a national campaign against foreign infiltration of people and homeland ( NA for short ) . The party ran for the first time for the National Council in the elections in 1967 and achieved a seat with James Schwarzenbach in the canton of Zurich. In 1969 the party launched the first Schwarzenbach initiative , named after him, under James Schwarzenbach as party chairman, which aimed to limit the cantonal proportion of foreigners to a maximum of 10 percent. The popular initiative was rejected in 1970, but achieved a surprising success with 46 percent of the votes in favor.
After an internal party dispute, Schwarzenbach resigned from NA in 1971 and founded his own republican movement . From November 1, 1970, the Basel Grand Councilor Rudolf Weber was the central president of the National Action. In 1972 he was replaced by Valentin Oehen as a result of internal quarrels .
In 1974 another popular initiative with similar content to the first was rejected by two thirds of the voters.
In 1973 the Young National Action (JNA) was founded. Today the Young Party is again represented in north-west and east Switzerland under the name Young Swiss Democrats (JSD).
In 1981 the party, at that time still as a National Action , took the referendum against the new Aliens Act and narrowly won the corresponding vote in 1982. In the years that followed, the party repeatedly achieved successes in votes, including in the fight against the easier naturalization of foreigners and in the area of asylum policy.
From 1984 to 1992 Eric Weber represented the Swiss Democrats in the Grand Council of the Canton of Basel-Stadt. Due to his rowdy, uncompromising and xenophobic behavior - even for SD standards - he damaged the image of his party and was subsequently expelled.
In 1990 the Republicans (who had become meaningless in the last few years of their existence) rejoined the party. She changed the name to Swiss Democrats (SD) . In 1991 she achieved parliamentary group strength for the first time in the National Council elections . In the early 1990s, the party initially gained strength, but then increasingly lost members, voters and parliamentary seats to the Swiss People's Party , which, like the SD in the past, won votes for votes with popular initiatives such as the “Against Asylum Abuse” (rejected on November 24, 2002) advertises.
On August 7, 2007, the Swiss Democrats launched their own popular initiative , through which the racism penal norm should be deleted from the penal code without replacement. The initiative did not materialize, however, because the required number of signatures was not achieved.
From 1999 to 2007 the SD were only represented in the legislature of the Swiss Confederation with the Bernese National Councilor Bernhard Hess . In the Swiss parliamentary elections in 2007 , Hess was not re-elected; after forty years, the Swiss Democrats were no longer represented in the National Council.
After this loss of seats, a discussion began within the party about its dissolution. A conversion of the party into a patriotic movement that would work with the right of initiative and referendum was unanimously rejected by the central executive committee on October 27, 2007.
The SD also suffered heavy losses in most of the cantonal and communal elections of the 2000s; there were only rarely exceptions, namely on February 12, 2006 in the city of Zurich and on March 8, 2009 in Aargau.
In the Swiss parliamentary elections in 2011 , the party's share of the vote was just 0.2%. In all six cantons in which the SD competed, it received less than one percent of the vote.
Current work
The Swiss Democrats have not been represented in a cantonal parliament since spring 2013 after they lost their two seats in the Grand Council of the Canton of Aargau in the elections on October 21, 2012 . The party no longer has any parliamentary seats at the local level either. In the municipal council elections on February 9, 2014, the party lost both seats in the municipal councils of the city of Zurich and Winterthur . The seats in the municipalities of Uster and Allschwil were lost during the current legislative period. The seat in Wädenswil , which came about through a change of party, was also lost in the general election in spring 2014.
At the delegates' meeting in Suhr on March 26, 2011, the Swiss Democrats decided to launch a popular initiative for a balanced migration balance between abroad and Switzerland. The reason given at the time was “population pressure that was increasing everywhere”.
literature
- Thomas Buomberger: Fight against unwanted strangers: From James Schwarzenbach to Christoph Blocher. Orell Füssli, Zurich 2004, ISBN 3-280-06017-6 .
- Concetto Vecchio: chase them away! The Schwarzenbach Initiative and the Italian Migrants . Orell Füssli publishing house. Zurich 2020, ISBN 978-3-280-05055-2 .
Web links
- Andrea Weibel: Swiss Democrats (SD). In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
- Swiss Democrats website
Individual evidence
- ^ Cantonal parliamentary elections. Federal Statistical Office, March 22, 2020, accessed on May 10, 2020 .
- ↑ Andrea Weibel: Swiss Democrats (SD). In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . March 20, 2017 , accessed February 28, 2020 .
- ↑ Positions on the SD website
- ↑ See “Switzerland and Switzerland”, SD short program from June 30, 2007 ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 144 kB)
- ^ Website of the Swiss federal authorities: Schwarzenbach Initiative . ( Memento of the original from April 16, 2004 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Website of the Swiss federal authorities: Federal popular initiative against foreign infiltration and overpopulation in Switzerland
- ↑ History of the JSD on the website of the Young Swiss Democrats NWS ( Memento of the original from February 24, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Website of the Swiss federal authorities: Federal People's Initiative against the Abuse of Asylum Law ( Memento of the original from April 16, 2004 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Federal popular initiative "For freedom of expression - get rid of the muzzle!"
- ↑ SD want a balanced migration balance. ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Bieler Tagblatt . March 27, 2011. Retrieved March 27, 2011.
