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The Greens and the Socialist Youth want to abolish the number of estates or at least replace it with a qualified majority. You will have a hard time with this proposal.
Berne National Councilor Regula Rytz advocates for a qualified group of more.
Photo: Peter Schneider (Keystone)
The group responsibility initiative would have required twelve professional votes. Eight and a half cantons said yes. Only a total of 6,000 voters in the cantons of Appenzell Innerrhoden, Glarus, Schaffhausen and Uri would have had to vote differently, and the initiative would have achieved a majority of the cantons in addition to the popular majority. The verdict was the closest in Glarus. There the opponents won with a difference of 608 votes.
It is only the second popular initiative in which the majority of the cantons overthrew the majority of the electorate. This leads to discontent: “Our direct democracy is in trouble,” says Berne National Councilor Regula Rytz (Greens). The small cantons have a great influence on the polls. Another problem is that French-speaking Switzerland is often outnumbered in the minority vote.
“There is a risk that popular initiatives no longer have a chance.”
“We have to talk about how we can come up with a fairer voting mode,” says Rytz. She envisions a qualified group of cantons with which cantons can only surpass a popular majority if two-thirds of cantons disagree. Then the initiative would have been accepted. The Greens had already proposed corresponding models in the early 1990s. These solutions will now be presented again. Otherwise, there is a risk that popular initiatives no longer have the possibility of being adopted despite the majority. “That weakens direct democracy.”
Rytz receives the support of the Socialist Youth. They even demand that the number of farms be completely abolished. It could not be that popular initiatives that achieved a majority in the town were not implemented by an obsolete regulation of the cantonal majority.
Don’t question the rules of the game
The parent party SP does not see it as dramatic. You can talk about anything, says co-chair Cédric Wermuth. But he’s not a friend to questioning the rules of the game on voting Sunday just because they sold out. Rather, the left must analyze exactly how it can be done in these cantons.
Sounds similar to opponents. “Anyone who wants to change the rules of the game now is a sore loser,” says Ruedi Noser, an adviser to the Zürich FDP. It is true that you cannot change the constitution with a very small majority of votes. “The threshold with the double plus is already deep today, in most associations it takes two thirds more to change the statutes.”
“The abolition of the number of estates necessitates in turn the number of estates.”
“You can always have a debate,” says political geographer Michael Hermann, “and of course it’s best when votes are counted and positions point in the same direction.” It is no accident that there has almost never been a town without a group of initiative groups, Hermann says. Left-wing initiatives have so far only been able to gain a majority if they also had a conservative element like the Alpine Initiative. Therefore, these did not exactly match the urban-rural contrast, so Ständemehr was not an obstacle. “If the urban-rural contrast continues to increase and the inhibition threshold for accepting left-wing urban initiatives decreases, this could well lead to widespread dissatisfaction with the number of properties,” he says. Hermann suspects, however, that the debate won’t get very far for two reasons. “First, the abolition of the number of properties is required again, and second, institutional rules that have been around for a long time can hardly be changed.”
“More stands ensures cohesion”
Andrea Gmür, State Councilor for the Lucerne CVP, opposes a change in the number of cantons. “Our country lives unbalanced, even with the smallest cantons and a population that thinks differently from the cities,” he says. The estates provide urgently needed social cohesion, which should not be risked just because you don’t like the outcome of the vote. And Jürg Grossen, president of the Green Liberals, said twice: “When the votes are so tight and the majority of the cantons reject them, then one should refrain from writing anything in the constitution.” Switzerland was not getting it wrong with that.
