by Isobel Leybold-Johnson, swissinfo.ch

Swiss newspapers have been mulling the consequences of Sunday’s parliamentary polls for the cabinet election in December – and have not made up their minds.

A less powerful rightwing Swiss People’s Party – which suffered a big loss – might actually make it more eligible for a second seat in government, some commentators argue. Meanwhile, the success of the new parties has strengthened the centre.

The People’s Party and the centre-left Greens suffered the biggest losses in the House of Representatives. The three other main parties also saw their support drop.

But the Liberal Greens, a Green Party splinter, gained at least nine seats and the Conservative Democrats, formed by moderate members of the People’s Party in 2008, gained an extra four mandates in the House of Representatives.

“The magic ends for the People’s Party,” was the Zurich-based Tages-Anzeiger’s verdict, while Geneva’s Le Temps saw “a strong knockback” for the party.

The papers made much of the fact that no one had predicted this outcome, not least the party itself which had thought it would gain 30 per cent of the electorate – it actually dropped 3.6 percentage points to 25.3 per cent – and make bigger inroads into the Senate that it actually did.

Image problem

“The party maintains a rightwing image at a time when the country thinks that we should be finding solutions in the centre to deal with an economic situation which is becoming ever more difficult and uncertain,” Le Temps said. For the 24 Heures newspaper, the result came from the party’s “lack of viability in decision-making bodies and its permanent opposition role”.

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http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/Specials/Elections_2011/News/Media_ponders_election_fallout_for_cabinet.html?cid=31418566