What you say is, of course, generally true, but this would seem to be a special case don’t you think? A case of a majority being given the chance to vote to take away a human right of a minority—it’s not your typical democratic fare. Many world leaders and human rights organisations also condemned the result and were puzzled by it. Yet, as far as I’m aware, there isn’t much interest in having a national discussion in Switzerland on the matter.

Thomas Hammarberg, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, has only recently commented on how a recent developments in a few EU countries (and Switzerland) are helping to legitimise and mainstream Islamophobia. (http://www.todayszaman.com/news-235938-some-eu-governments-consent-helps-rise-of-islamophobia.html)

To assume that democracy is infallible and therefore can never be discussed or scrutinised is really dangerous, as is to assume that democratic processes have never been abused by powerful and/or rich organisations. Do you really believe that propaganda is immaterial to democracy? When mass-media broadcasts factually wrong information and magazines (funded by the party who are behind the initiative) print tabloid-style hysteria about immigrants, while the underfunded opposing voice is confined to a few badly-designed posters.

Whether direct democracy can work when 47% of the population do not vote is yet another matter.

Anyway, the point of my post was that it’s impossible to have a conversation about the process because of dogmatic, reactionary beliefs. This comment thread has not changed my mind on that one bit.

I am closing comments now. If anyone wants to continue the discussion, please email me (link at the top of this page.) Just try and read through everything first.

Firstly, there really is no use in comparing political high and low points of different countries in such an ad-hoc way (especially such radically different ones.) Secondly, being an apologist for something bad because worse things have happened is falling into a naive logic trap (“If we can’t build Christian churches in Islamic countries, then why should we let them…blah blah blah.”)

Finally:

The thing that I was attacking in this blog post is the fact that it’s hard to have a debate on Swiss political situations like the minaret referendum because people dogmatically believe the system is the best and always true. This opens the process up to exploitation by political groups, because people are less skeptical about it.

It really doesn’t matter if Switzerland were the best country in the world at absolutely everything, it can still be better and the population should still scrutinise itself.

Almost all of the comments on this thread just add weight to what I believe my original argument to be. Maybe I just wrote the post badly.

> Please stop picturing again and again the swiss people as a mass of dumb alpine farmers only doing what some stupid adverts are telling them to do.

That’s not how I view the Swiss at all, Beat. But propaganda/advertising-in-general works by mass manipulation of people. If there are blanket, money-driven campaigns telling you that smoking is great, with no real counter argument, then that’s what everyone ends up thinking.

> Why wasting ressources on people who are willingly harming the same society who gives them a secure place to live, job opportunities, education, social security, you name it?

From various videos I saw of people being interviewed on the street, they also made the same argument. Specifically, many of them stated that Switzerland shouldn’t have to pay for their prison time, but the people are deported *after* they have served time in a Swiss prison, right?

> There is no such thing as a human right for staying in a given country,

The problems are with successive-generations of immigrants, because they are not given citizenship, no? You later say that the European Court of Human Rights may overturn it, which is one definition of “human rights.”

> Ruled guilty of a majour fellony (not for a minour deed)

The US passed the same law too (although tempered somewhat by the automatic citizenship of anyone born in the US) and it originally started off with “major” crimes, but that benchmark is being lowered all of the time. Gradual creep is adding more and more crimes to the list.

The real problem is not with this one initiative, but with the SVP’s whole agenda. The result of this recent campaign is that people have had their beliefs that immigrants are criminals reinforced, they’ve had their beliefs of what a real Swiss person is reinforced (Ivan, no matter how long he and his family have been here will never _really_ be one of us), etc. This is all building for the next SVP-driven initiative, which I believe they are already drawing up.

The whole point of my original post was not to say that Switzerland is terrible, nor that direct democracy is terrible, but to lament the fact that it seems to be outside of the question to ever question the system—that even amongst people who are disgusted by these recent outcomes, there is a dogmatic love of the system.

It’s true that there has been a recent rise of the far-right across the whole of Europe, but at least there is also a response from the left/centre who are angry with the political system of their country. Switzerland seems to accept everything because they believe that the decision has been reached in the best way possible, and I’m saying that this belief is what opens it up to exploitation.

Let’s look at this example:

A group of people are kept in a room and told that red things are the best, because red things mean love and warmth. They are aggressively told this with proven advertising-industry-methods and political spin. Later they are asked to eliminate one colour from their worlds: red or green, and that their choice, as the people, will be upheld. The people have been misled (let’s say that red and green really have the same properties,) but because they believe they all had a free choice, the losers in the argument are less likely to complain. They may not believe in the result, but they believe the decision was reached fairly and are willing to respect the verdict without fuss.

In a system, where a third-party takes responsibility for that enforcing that decision and doesn’t tell the people that it was their direct choice, the people who do not agree with it are more likely to stage a counter-campaign against it. A lot of how other forms of democracy work are two sides battling out their views, no?

Direct democracy is, of course, far from being a terrible system. In most cases it seems really great, I’m sure it’s had a lot more positive effect than negative over history, but Switzerland seems to be an anomaly to me where people who do not agree with things their country are doing, are not furious at the system, because it is inherently built-in that they can’t be.

The fact that it is perceived that the people have a free and completely educated choice over initiative issues *is* open to exploitation and I think it’s clear that SVP is exploiting that situation to validate their agenda. I just wish that it was possible to have a debate about that, without reactionary defending of direct democracy.

This was never an attack specifically aimed at Switzerland because I think it’s the worst country in the world—that’s far, far from the truth—nor because I believe direct democracy is completely flawed—also not true—it was made because I lived in the country for two-and-a-half-years and I was shocked/amazed about lots of things and philosophically looking for reasons why this might be.

This one blog post continues to get more and more traffic as time goes by—it seems to be the third hit on Google.com for ‘Direct Democracy’ now, which is just bizarre—and there has been a big visitor spike in the last week when the world’s press reported on the recent Swiss foreigner initiate, and the the comments have opened up once again.

To be clear: this isn’t a big on-going agenda that I have against Switzerland. It was one post made, when I was stunned/shocked/upset at how the minaret initiative could pass in the country I was living in. It’s not based on any academic research or grounded in well-studied fact, it’s a philosophical, observational rambling on an outsider’s view of why it might have happened.

Beat: I would be interested to hear your views on how to get a more balanced discussion around heated issues during people’s initiative campaigns. How would you try to reinvigorate the Swiss left?

Last thing: I totally gree with al loomis. The number of bad decision by politicans exeed by far the number of bad decisions by the people. Saying that, I’m happy to live in a country where the people have the last saying on whatever the politicians decide. Even when they sometimes get it wrong.

May I remind you that this practice has not been invented by the swiss. It is already in place in France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Sweden, Holland, etc…

So, the fact that the swiss constitution allows to deport foreigners who were ruled guilty of a majour fellony (not for a minour deed) is in line with most of EU countries. That’s not the problem here.
The real problem is that there is no restriction of commensurability, meaning that for the decision to deport a person or not, the judge is not taking into account the personal situation of the convict. This is against the common practice of the swiss law system and any other modern rule of law.
That’s the reason why I voted against the initiative and for the proposed solution of the swiss parliament, which would have allowed to deport a foreigner convicted for a crime (sentenced to more than 18 monts of prison) after having taken into account his personal situation and the situation of the place where he is deported.

Sadly the swiss people decided otherwise. That’s sad but no reason to crap our political system. Let’s first see how the initiative is written into the consitution. I’m sure some changes will be made taking into account the bilateral treaties Switzerland has with the EU. If not there is still the possibility to go to the european court of human rights in Strassbourg. If the court finds that this late decision by the swiss souvereing is against the ECHR, Switzerland will be forced to change its constitution.
Again, that’s why we have the separation of powers.

Best regards,

Beat

The whole “yes” campaign was fuelled by ugly, racist propaganda with an extremely weak “no” campaign by an almost non-existant left/centre. People who I speak to don’t agree with the result, but just accept the situation as another incremental slide in Swiss politics. There is no real passionate opposition to this.

My original post is as meaningful as ever. The Swiss people are being manipulated and scared into taking away human rights by powerful and rich politicians and it’s all being made “legitimate” because it’s going through the channel of Direct Democracy. And still, people refuse to question anything.

Can you start with these?

* Women’s rights,
* Fuelling racism with overblown propaganda,
* Encroaching on religious freedoms,
* Pandering to the rich,
* Shielding tax avoiders.

I’m not suggesting Switzerland is the worst in any of these categories, but your comment is kind of ridiculous.

they never seem to grasp that many more bad decisions are made by politicians acting in secret for their own career advancement, or for the people whose money supports their campaigns.

the point is not that democracy is perfect, but rather merely that it is the best we humans can do.

switzerland is a frail example, small and unique. still, they have a better record than any other country in just about any field you can name.