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February 2009 poster, UDC/SVP for campaign to say no to Bulgarian, Romanian workers: the motion was defeated

Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The right-wing UDC, known in German as the SVP (the Swiss People’s Party), is continuing its recent marketing tradition of provocative public campaigns: Saturday the party denounced the US and called on Switzerland to retaliate for the US announcement 19 February that it is taking UBS, the largest Swiss bank, to court. The news promptly moved to the top of the most popular list of articles on Reuters.

Reuters calls the UDC Switzerland’s largest party. A poll by the country’s largest polling agency 16 February showed that its support has fallen from 28% in December 2007 to 22.8%. Switzerland has four main political parties who share power, as well as several smaller parties.

The UDC has provoked outrage at home in Switzerland and abroad with election campaigns that have used slogans others considered racist, a change from the normally conservative political campaign process. Its most famous poster was created for the 2007 elections, when the UDC had posters showing one black sheep that represented foreigners who committed crimes, among a crowd of white sheep. Before the 8 February 2009 vote on extending the free movement of labour agreement with the European Union to Romanians and Bulgarians, it ran a campaign with a group of black crows pecking at a Swiss flag, reminiscent for some observers of the Alfred Hitchcock thriller The Birds.

UDC leader from canton Valais, Oskar Freysinger, told GenevaLunch in 2007 that provocative publicity is part of the party’s tactics. “When you complain that our campaign tactics are too aggressive, you’re doing our work for us – you’re getting us a lot of publicity.”

The party’s criticism of the US in the UBS affair has barely made a ripple in the news in Switzerland, with attention focused on widespread criticism of the action of the US, perceived as unilateral and ignoring bilateral agreements.