40. Border

If you ride the train from Waldshut in Germany to Koblenz in Switzerland, you'll cross over the border in/at the Rhine and see something like this.

Today there was a referendum/vote to decide whether Switzerland should change the treaty that it has had with the EU until now which allowed EU nationals free access to the Swiss labor market. The change would mean that the EU people would be treated as citizens of non-EU countries are treated.

As I write this, the results have just come in, and it shows the country split almost perfectly: 49.7% no to 50.3% yes. It's too early for me to find up-to-date analysis in English, but here's a piece from this morning:

<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/09/swiss-vote-eu-immigration-referendum>

Swiss National Day

The street lamps on the main street in Villigen have been decorated for Swiss National Day.

Back in 1291 (no, not a typo) "three Alpine cantons swore the oath of confederation" on August 1, and this is considered to be the birth of Switzerland. It was only in 1993 that the day was legally established as a paid holiday.

More information at: Swissworld

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Calmy-Rey at the Windisch Amphitheater

I mentioned in yesterday's post that the Swiss National Day is celebrated on August 1st. Most communities organize bonfires and fireworks, but instead of partaking in the Villigen one, we went over to the Windisch amphitheater. We had heard that Micheline Calmy-Rey, the Swiss foreign minister would be the guest of honor there.

As a francophone Swiss, she doesn't have a native Swiss-German dialect and so gave her speech in high-German. Below is a link to a PDF file with the text of the speech which I liked a lot.
1. August Rede 2009 (Windisch)

A little background: The Swiss Federal Council has seven departments and correspondingly, seven ministers heading them. These ministers take turns serving as president, a position that has a term of one year. Calmy-Rey was president in 2007.

Notes on the photo: The venue was the Roman amphitheater in Windisch (next to Brugg, see this post of mine from 2007). There was very little light and my camera does very poorly in these situations. I was also too far away to use the flash. The way I managed this image is by making a movie and "borrowing" the light from the flashes of the "serious" photographers. I then made some screenshots from the resulting footage and picked what I considered the best of the lot.

P. S. LinkWithin is having trouble with this one. All the suggestions it has made when I've landed on the page have been really weak...

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Der Wechsel ist angekommen

"Change has arrived."
And now the hard work will have to begin.

A recent screenshot of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. The NZZ dates back to 1780 - it was known as the Zürcher Zeitung until 1821 - and is the main German language Swiss newspaper. NZZ Online.

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Strolling along Hauptstrasse

A handful of cows were seen walking down Hauptstrasse on Saturday morning. Here's one of the ones bringing up the rear. Not to worry, the cowherd was at hand, though outside the scope of this photo. The bicyclist was not a part of the entourage.

20081018

Excursion: Bundesplatz in Bern

Enjoying the fountains at the Swiss parliament square (Bundesplatz) in Bern.

The building in the back is the parliament building and it has recently had all its renovation-related scaffolding removed. The square with the 26 fountains representing the 26 Swiss cantons is a big hit with children (and dogs) in the summer. In case you were wondering, the water is collected in an underground tank where it is cleaned before being recirculated (source).

To see a couple more photos that I took, visit my overflow blog.
Here are two old posts of mine about the parliament.
To see some pretty photos from the architects' website, go to Lee + Mundwiler.
To see movies of the fountains in action (Wasserspiel - water play), visit this Bern website (look in the red box on the right).

20080711

'Tis the season IV

I'm not going to say much, but I'm quietly cheering. For those of you who might be interested, here's a list of my previous posts on politics. Oh, and here's a link to a post about this subject by blogger Margaret Powell, with a great spoof of the black sheep poster some of you might recall.

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Sheep in the Besserstein vineyards

This photo was obviously taken in the winter, in January to be precise. Just a few minutes (uphill) walk from these vineyards would get you to the woods from yesterday.

People's party becomes political black sheep
Abuses, conspiracies - and black sheep - have all featured in a controversial election campaign by the rightwing Swiss People’s Party. September 10, 2007

A couple of days ago, I mentioned the strained relationship between the rightwing SVP and the three other political parties that make up the Cabinet. While there are several issues on which the SVP has provocative or dubious ideas, the one that always makes the headlines here and abroad is that of immigration. For the past decade, they've run ads that are gratuitously racist and fear-inducing. This campaign season is no different and the poster that has shown up everywhere depicts three white sheep standing on the Swiss flag, while one of them kicks a black sheep away. The title is Sicherheit schaffen (establish security) and the law that the SVP wants to get into the books is one where a person convicted of felony (murder, rape, drug trafficking, human trafficking, burglary or fraud related to the receipt of social benefits) would be deported to his or her country of origin after they serve his/her prison term (the native-Swiss felons get to stay here). They would also be banned from re-entering Switzerland for 5 to 15 years. How this proposal differs from what's currently on the books I don't know yet.

I must admit that at first, I didn't read anything beyond the black sheep in the family allusion, but upon further reading, in the context of the basic ideals of the party and in the combination with their previous campaigns, I must conclude that the image was deliberately chosen to foster fear and suspicion of foreigners. I'm a little slow on the uptake, unlike some other local bloggers (Rashunda Tramble, This non-American Life).

A lot of statements are being made criticizing the SVP and their methods. The Swiss President Micheline Calmy-Rey (member of the center-right SDP) had the following to say:

I think it is important that there are people in this country who have the courage to stand up and denounce this type of campaign, which to be quite frank disgusts me. It disgusts me because it stirs up hatred. They are racist campaigns.

Source: People's Party accused of "racist" campaign
Switzerland's biggest political party, the rightwing Swiss People's Party, has come under renewed fire for its hard-hitting election campaign attacking foreigners. August 30, 2007

I had hoped to scan through many different sources for information for these posts, but the fact is that I can't manage it in the time I'm able or willing to spend on the topic, especially given how slow my German reading and comprehension are. As a result, you will notice that I almost always reference swissinfo. If you, as a reader, have other links to information that you think could be interesting, please drop a line in the comments.

Other related content at swissinfo (excerpts chosen by me):

- Urban violence and youth crime on the increase
According to the (Bern) university hospital's study, those who get caught up in the fights are not primarily outsiders, the unemployed or asylum-seekers. Sixty per cent are Swiss, and the typical person in fights is 25 and has an education and a job. February 9, 2007

- Politicians "exaggerate" youth crime problem
Young people, especially foreigners, are being misused by politicians trying to score points in election year, a child psychologist tells swissinfo. February 17, 2007

- Parties prepare to dig deep
Switzerland's four main political parties will spend more than SFr1 million ($820,000) each on October's federal elections. April 9, 2007

- Three out of four Swiss prisoners are foreign
Around 70 per cent of prisoners in Switzerland are not Swiss but not because foreigners commit more crimes according to a recent study. June 30, 2006

20070121

Excursion: Bundeshaus in Bern

Bern is the capital of Switzerland, and lies upstream of Villigen on the river Aare. Quite far upstream. Here's one of my photos of the Bundeshaus (Parliament) I mentioned yesterday as having a lot of scaffolding, and in this case, cranes. I stood here to take this photo, the Bundeshaus is to the left. There's a lot to say about Bern, but I'll just send you to an active Bern blog by, surprise, yet another foreigner in CH! To be fair, since I look for blogs written in English, I'm trawling through a sample that must be heavily non-native-Swiss.

Back to the business at hand:

• 1959 was the year in which the 4 main political parties agreed to divide the Cabinet seats according to the public support for each party. This allocation is known as the Zauberformel = Magic Formula.
• 2 seats for the SP Social Democratic Party - left [had 26.3% of the votes then]
• 2 the number of seats held by FDP Free Democratic Party - center-right (radical) [23.7%]
• 2 the number of seats held by CVP Christian Democratic People's Party - center [23.3%]
• 1 the number of seats held by SVP Swiss People's Party - far right [had 11.6%]

Source: Der Bund kurz erklärt 2006

Sometime in the early 1990s, the far right SVP started to see a strong rise in voter support. See graphic from the Federal Statistics Office here. The distribution of seats in the Cabinet remained in place until the 1999 parliamentary elections when the far right SVP received 22.48% of the 2,005,449 valid votes cast. Note: the number of registered voters that year was 4,620,850 which means that 43% of the voters turned out. In 2003, 45% of the voting population cast their ballots. While keeping in mind that the Swiss have a multitude of elections or referenda thoughout the year so maybe there's some voter burn-out, it's interesting to compare that with the following countries at their last parliamentary or presidential elections:

• 85% in the first round of the 2007 presidential elections in France
• 83% in parliamentary elections 2006 in Italy
• 77% in the 2005 parliamentary elections in Germany
• 57% in the 2004 presidential elections in the US
  

Source: Silent majority always wins Swiss ballots at swissinfo.org.

In the minds of some, 2003 was the year the Magic Formula died as the continued popularity of the SVP among the voters called for a reorganization in the Cabinet:

• 23.3% of the votes for SP - 2 seats (no change)
• 17.9% of the votes for FDP - 2 (no change)
  
• 14.4% for the CVP - 1 (was 2)
  
• 26.6% for SVP - 2 seats (was 1)
  

Source: IFES Election Guide

The popularity of the SVP has caused much hand-wringing among the other parties, who have been unable to attract their voters back. Here's a swissinfo article about the shuffle after the 2003 elections. Tension between the SVP and the other groups is high and SVP is currently claiming that there's a conspiracy to drive them out of Parliament. The leader of the group, Christoph Blocher, is currently under investigation (swissinfo). More on that later.

20070715

Excursion: Swissminiatur at Melide on Lago Lugano

Swiss politics 101


The parliament building in Bern has been under renovation since I moved here, so the photos I have of it involve a lot of scaffolding. This is a photo of a model at Swissminiatur, an amusement park in Canton Ticino with 1:25 scale models of some of the most sightworthy things in Switzerland (and at least one why-is-that-here). Yes, trains as well and some dated luxury sports cars.

The reason I bring this up is that another controversial parliamentary election campaign season is upon us. Over the course of the next few days, I'll try to briefly summarize what makes it controversial, in a style appropriate for my own short attention span. This exercise is partly (maybe even mostly) for my own benefit and I'm having to inform myself about this topic. If it bores you, come back in a couple of days, I expect to be done by then.

Some basic information about the structure of the government:

• 7 members of der Bundesrat = Federal Council (elected by the members of the Parliament)
• 1 Bundesrat member is elected President each year (rotating position)
• 200 members of the National Council in the Parliament (Nationalrat)
• about 36,000 people are represented by each MP
• 46 senators: members of the Council of States (Ständerat) in the Parliament
  

The political groups and their popularity:

• 4 main political groups
• 25 percent of voters support SVP - Swiss People's Party - right/far-right
• 21 percent of voters support SP - Social Democratic Party - left
• 16 percent of voters support FDP - Free Democratic Party - center-right (liberal)
• 16 percent of voters support CVP - Christian Democratic People's Party - center
• 11 percent of voters support the Greens - green/left
• 11 percent of voters support the rest

Notice the big chunk carried by the rightwing party. It wasn't like that until 1999. Tomorrow: the Magic Formula and the increasing popularity of the right. Link to the website of the Swiss Parliament (options for Deutsch, Français, Italiano and to some extent, English).

20061103 Canon PowerShot S410

Reminder for die Einwohnergemeindeversammlung

About twice a year there's a village meeting. One of the items under discussion and up for voting is approval of citizenship of foreign residents (Ausländer, like me). In Switzerland, things are organized at a very local level, and for the most part, foreigners become citizens through the community in which they live. Exceptions include citizenship through marriage, in which case the community that confers citizenship would most likely be the community of the spouse rather than the community in which the couple might reside in at the time of application. Switzerland doesn't grant citizenship jus soli, so there are many individuals who, although they were born here, have to meet certain requirements (of residency, etc) and then apply for citizenship if they so desire. These laws are under frequent revision and also vary from locality to locality, so things are always changing as they are in many countries around the world.

The Village Council recommended several individuals for approval at yesterday's meeting. I hope it went well for them -- I'll find out in the monthly village newsletter.

Addendum 1 Jun: The newsletter arrived today and all the people applying for citizenship were approved.

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