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Democratic rights
Small cantons hit rock bottom with corporate responsibility initiative: now the Greens are sawing more
Despite the popular majority, the corporate responsibility initiative has failed. Some losers now want to change the rules of the game. The Greens demand that in the future only a qualified majority of at least two-thirds of the states weakens the majority of the population.
The Zurich National Councilor, Balthasar Glättli, wants to reform the rules on the number of farms.
Almost 42 times more people live in the canton of Zurich than in the canton of Uri. In votes that require the number of cantons, the verdict of the small rural canton weighs exactly as much as that of the large urban canton. The group responsibility initiative (KVI) also failed due to Uri in the cantons (14.5 to 8.5 cantons). However, a small majority of the people (50.7 percent) approved of the green left issue. It’s no wonder a heated debate broke out over federalism on Sunday. Because approximately one fifth of the population has the de facto right of veto over the remaining four fifths.
Therefore, the president of Juso, Ronja Jansen, would prefer to dump more positions in the “dustbin of history”. The former president of the Greens, Regula Rytz, calls for “fairer rules of representation in direct democracy.”
Through Twitter, he submitted a proposal that former Green National Councilor Leni Robert unsuccessfully submitted to parliament in 1993: Only a qualified two-thirds majority can undo the majority of the people. The current green president Balthasar Glättli will present a corresponding proposal in the winter session, as reported by ‘Telezüri’. The Greens think direct democracy is in trouble. Rytz criticized that a minority of the cantons of French-speaking Switzerland had again been defeated by the majority of the German-speaking cantons.
Protection wall for small cantons
But why was the number of stands introduced in Switzerland? In 1848, the fathers of the modern federal state constitution wanted to prevent the large cantons from politically pushing the small ones against the wall. After the civil war of 1847, attempts were also made to create a balance and accommodate the defeated Catholic cantons of Sonderbund (central Switzerland, as well as Valais and Friborg). The bicameral system with a national council and a council of states and the number of estates are an expression of this consideration.
In the history of the federal state, 10 constitutional amendments have failed in spite of the majority of the people, the last eight of them in the last 50 years. “Close collisions,” as Adrian Vatter, professor of political science at the University of Bern, calls them, are much more common.
Adrian Vatter is a professor of political science.
Best EEA example: 50.3 percent said no on December 6, 1992, and 16 states refused to join.
“Bad losers”, meanwhile, the bourgeois opponents of the KVI are calling out those who are now ruining the rules of the game of direct democracy. Ronja Jansen appears to have little knowledge of the story, Schwyz government adviser Kaspar Michel tweeted. The fair consideration of all cantons, regardless of their size, is an essential characteristic of Switzerland. “It is true that the threshold for constitutional changes is high,” says Michel. As a largely autonomous state, all cantons are equally affected by a constitutional change.
Risk of a total accident
The issue of more estates is regularly on the political agenda. In the run-up to the total revision of the 1999 Federal Constitution, Parliament debated it intensively. However, they did not include suggestions such as a different weighting of professional votes in the new constitution. The risk of a total accident would have been enormous. Because an obstacle to any kind of reform of the group of cantons seems insurmountable: the small cantons would have to seal their own disempowerment.
Adrian Vatter says he has an ambivalent relationship with the class. See the idea of Regula Rytz and Balthasar Glättli as a factual suspension of it. In a guest post in New Zealand, he once suggested that 55 percent more people should no longer apply the number of properties. The basic idea: a strong democratic vote beats the federalist vote. But Vatter also believes that the institutional reform of the set of latifundios is practically impossible. But there is also a fact: the population of the canton of Zurich has multiplied since the state was founded.
Urs Altermatt is emeritus professor of contemporary history.
Urs Altermatt, emeritus professor of contemporary history at the University of Freiburg, advocates keeping the number of cantons. “It is a federal element of compensation in the federal state, which complements the bicameral system and protects linguistic and cultural minorities, as well as small and medium-sized cantons. If the big cantons could always cancel this, we would have a serious political problem, “he says. Altermatt notes that the Swiss constitution is largely based on the American one. Hillary Clinton also won a popular majority in the presidential election four years ago, but Trump won more voters’ votes. The electoral system was not modified.
