Left-wing parties won a majority for the first time since 1918 in the parliament of western Switzerland's Geneva canton in weekend elections, according to results published yesterday. The narrow triumph of a left-wing and ecologist coalition, which took 51 out of the 100 seats in the cantonal Council of State, or parliament, leaving 49 to centre and right-wing parties, was hailed as historic by local commentators.
But Sunday's poll, which saw a turnout of 39 per cent, will be followed by further elections next month for the cantonal government and will not automatically bring the left to power in and around Geneva's international city.
Analysts said the outcome of the voting was more likely to lead to a restoration in Geneva of Switzerland's typical consensus-style administration, with ministerial posts shared by left and right.
Over the past four years, a so-called "Bourgeois Coalition" of the three main centre-right parties - Liberals, Radicals and Christian Democrats - has run the Frenchspeaking canton after polls in 1993 gave it 56 seats. Candidates from the three parties then swept into government at subsequent elections for the cantonal cabinet.
Political commentators said the weekend result indicated voters were unhappy with the "single-colour" style of administration and wanted a return to the left-right coalition that had existed since the 1930s.
The left-wing victory was due to a strong showing by the social democratic Swiss Socialist Party, close to France's ruling socialists, which took 22 seats, seven more than in 1993. Its more left-wing partners, the Left Alliance, which includes the old communist Party of Labour, lost two seats and held 19, while the ecologists won 10, an advance of two on the previous elections.
Geneva is one of 26 autonomous cantons in Switzerland, whose federal republic is composed of distinct Italian-Swiss, French-Swiss and German-Swiss linguistic groups.