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Billionaire Blocher Gains Fans After Losing Swiss Cabinet Post

Billionaire Christoph Blocher’s ouster from Switzerland’s governing coalition may leave his anti-immigration People’s Party stronger than ever as voters sign up in protest.

“We lost count of membership applications after some 5,000 piled up within three days,” said Matthias Mueller, a Bern- based spokesman for the People’s Party, which already has 80,000 registered members. “We’ve been flooded with e-mails and people came by to sign up. We even had to hire extra staff.”

Blocher, a 67-year-old former business executive, may run to reclaim a seat in parliament, or buy a company, turn it around and use the funds for his opposition work, he said on his television show. “Everything is open,” he said on Dec. 12, the day legislators replaced him as justice minister with another member of his party. The party responded by withdrawing from the coalition, ending 49 years of consensus government.

“Blocher is someone who fights in the trenches,” said Thomas Minder, 47, managing director of Trybol AG, a Swiss maker of mouthwash who knows Blocher from a campaign to protect the integrity of Swiss brands. “He’s not going to hide in the back rows. I’d almost say he’s stronger now that he’s not in the government.”

When Blocher’s party, called SVP in German, quit the government, it ended the formula under which the country’s four largest parties have shared cabinet positions among themselves since 1959. Being in opposition may give him more leeway to block government decisions through referendums, the way Swiss citizens act as a check on policy makers.

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