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Residents of a small town in northwestern Switzerland today voted in a referendum to leave a German-speaking canton and join a French-speaking one, after years of animosity.
In 1978, when Switzerland, a confederation of 26 cantons with four national languages, established the new French-speaking canton of Jura, several districts in the area preferred to remain part of the German-speaking Bern.
The town of Moutier, with a population of 7,500, was one of them.
But not anymore; Sunday’s referendum yielded a strong majority to join the Francophone Jura with 2,114 in favor and 1,740 against.
The issue has deeply divided residents for decades and separatist administrations have been elected repeatedly seeking to break away from Bern.
The canton’s government leader, Pierre-Alain Schnegg, admitted that the result was “extremely clear.”
Moutier will do better as one of the major cities in the Jura than as one of the many small German-speaking communities in Bern, Francophones say.
A previous referendum in 2017, in which a small majority of people voted to join Jura, was annulled due to voting irregularities.
So security was high today and the two camps were kept separate dividing the city in two to avoid problems.
Federal authorities also sent observers to ensure that the vote went smoothly.
However, the public television channel RTS reported seeing a letter from the canton of Bern to federal authorities alleging a suspicious influx of new residents to Moutier in the run-up to the vote.
The new residents were “people … for whom it is difficult to understand their connections to Moutier,” RTS reported.
In what became known as the “Jurassic question,” separatists have sometimes resorted to extreme measures in the past, occupying offices in embassies in both Paris and Brussels.
One activist even died in 1993 when a bomb he was carrying exploded.
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