Four decades of Swiss consensus politics are on the line Wednesday as parliament votes whether to give the resurgent right wing a second cabinet seat or provoke it into quitting the coalition government.

After coming first in October general elections, the populist Swiss People's Party (SVP) laid claim to a second seat in the seven-minister cabinet and said they would walk out of the four-party power-sharing government if their bid failed.

Flouting the Swiss tradition of consensus and deal-making, the SVP has challenged the fabled "magic formula" -- a deal established in 1959 and under which the SVP, as smallest party at the time, has just one seat while each of the others has two.

The same four parties have shared power ever since. Now the SVP insists one of them must hand over a seat in government.

To add insult to injury, the isolationist party proposed its most controversial figure, the billionaire industrialist Christoph Blocher, as its new ministerial candidate.

Head of the SVP in Zurich, he has long been a thorn in the side of the establishment but has won popular support by campaigning for neutrality, staunchly opposing any plan to join the European Union and calling for a clamp down on asylum-seekers.

Blocher entering government would mark the first shift in the balance of power since the 1959 gentlemen's agreement.

However, observers say if Switzerland's 246 parliamentarians veto a seat for the 63-year-old populist, the SVP's departure into opposition could rock the notion of Swiss stability -- the cornerstone of its reputation as a financial safe haven.

According to a recent poll by the GfS institute, 60 percent of Swiss voters agree that the SVP -- which topped the election with some 27 percent of the vote -- should get a second cabinet seat but 43 percent believed Blocher should not be a minister.

In addition to re-electing its incumbent cabinet representative, Defense Minister Samuel Schmid, the SVP has declared it will chase one of the seats of its waning coalition partners, the Christian Democratic Party (CVP).

If that fails, the SVP said it will aim for Social Democrat and Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey's position.

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