Re: Swiss elections and referenda - New Federal Councilor(s) election 7 December

[Never Made it to Graceland]

That's horrific. I'm not sure how a change could happen but it needs to happen soon.

[Never Made it to Graceland]

Swiss parliament just passed a law to legalized same-sex marriage and will permit transgender people to change their legal gender identity. It has to go to a vote next year before it can be full implemented but that's all but guaranteed to pass.

Cool, gays can get married before they get evicted! Mission accomplished. Neoliberalism.jpeg

[Never Made it to Graceland]

Surprised the burka ban is passing only 51-49. You normally expect this kind of question to be the one that very easily wins if the past decade of European politics taught me anything tbh

The depressing thing for me is that it probably would have actually failed had it not been for the toxic French debate on "Islam" seeping over the border. Sometimes I wonder if the MCG didn't have the right sort of attitude towards les frouzes 😏

But otherwise... yeah, Switzerland is probably one of the more open minded European countries with regards to immigrants these days. Almost certainly the only one that has actually become more open towards them. Which, well, imagine telling that to someone 20 years ago, but here we are.

Do you think that if the free trade referendum had been opposed along the lines of skepticism to free trade/criticism of the working conditions free trade can sometimes result in, it could have been rejected? Or do you think that the environmental line was actually more effective for the "No" campaign?

Well the referendum was launched explicitely with palm oil as the motivation, the the attitudes of the actual people running the campaign were always such that it was going to be their main focus. Although that said, it is telling that the campaign was headed by a winemaker, which is probably the single industry that benefits from the most protectionist trade policies in the country (and the tariffs everyone else sticks on it in retaliation is the principle reason that you can't buy Swiss wine outside of Switzerland, true story).

That said, like I said, too many people's jobs are directly dependent on exports for protectionism to be a winning argument. The advantage of Swiss industry- watchmaking, precision instruments, high end chemicals and pharmaceutics; is that is naturally "protected" by the fact that it is too high tech and specialised to be possible to do in lower income countries. Which makes people a lot less worried about having their jobs being delocalised. Put it simply, Rolex aren't going to move their production abroad because they are simply too reliant on the "swiss watch" image as central to their brand.

Making it about working conditions would have made it a re-run of the multinationals vote, which I think was too exhausting of a topic for people to be willing and ready to go through it again.

In that case, is there any chance they reverse the limitation on the Swiss passport by descent they passed several years ago? I know you said it was uncontroversial because nobody would want a garbage undesirable like me to enter your country, but I guess there's always hope.