A right to discriminate? Switzerland's relations with its foreign residents will be under renewed scrutiny in June as voters consider a controversial proposal that would allow local citizens to hold secret ballots to decide on passport applications.

AuteurLedsom, Mark
Fonction POLITICS

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You've seen the black sheep, now it's time for the black hands. Never afraid to court controversy, the right-wing Swiss People's Party has come up with another striking--some are saying offensive--image to heap attention on its latest proposal to "protect" Switzerland from what the party describes as "mass naturalisation".

The latest poster campaign now plastered across the country shows five hands--only one of which is white--reaching into a box generously stuffed with Swiss passports. Using official figures collated by the Federal Office for Migration, the People's Party launched its referendum campaign in April with a claim that passports could now be obtained "almost as easily as just picking them up at a news kiosk".

Although quickly accused (not for the first time) of racism by their political opponents, the party's officials have insisted that the June 1 vote is not in itself an attack on foreigners or their ability to apply for Swiss citizenship. Instead they argue that the issue is about the rights of the Swiss themselves. Foreigners can of course receive Swiss passports, the party says, but it should be the people themselves rather than government committees who decide which applicants are suitable.

"We are not dictating how the process has to work but just saying that the individual communities have the right to decide themselves," People's Party president Toni Brunner told reporters at the April news conference.

"People living in big cities might still want to leave the task to their local parliament, government officials or a democratically elected committee--we are not ruling that out.

"But it should also be possible for the people to decide that they want to vote directly on citizenship applications rather than leave it to appointed officials. The whole issue is really about protecting the autonomy of the individual communities."

Turning back the clock

The People's Party initiative is not trying to break new ground. In fact the party freely acknowledges that it wants to turn back the clock five years to the time when ballot box decisions on citizenship applications were legally carried out in several communities across the country.

Although not practised on a wide scale (the government says fewer than five per cent of Switzerland's political communities carried out direct naturalisation votes) the ballot box system came in for strong criticism in 2000 when voters in the Lucerne town of Emmen appeared to come out en masse against...

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