Xenophobia By a Nose

Shock waves are still reverberating here in Switzerland over the narrow (50.3%) approval on Sunday of the anti-immigration measure proposed by the right-wing so-called "Swiss People's Party" (SVP aka UDP in la Suisse romande).

France and Germany in particular have voiced deep concerns about Switzerland's bringing back strict quotas on immigration from EU countries and effectively invalidating Switzerland's agreement with the EU on free movement.

Switzerland has managed a clever balancing act in recent years.  It has obtained all basic benefits of EU membership, without actually being an EU member, thus avoiding less beneficial consequences.  It has done this by entering into a series of bilateral agreements with the EU.  Now the results of Sunday's vote threaten to endanger all of those agreements.  Several Swiss politicians had believed that the measure would fail and appear somewhat nonplussed by the results.

I am proud and happy to note that the measure did not succeed in my own little corner of Switzerland. Much good as that will do to the outcome, it is still nice to know that xenophobes are not all around me.  This was also a very narrow win and the Swiss are essentially a pragmatist and idealistic people.  The actual results may be softened somewhat - at least everyone I know believes so, including some of my Swiss students, who announced themselves "embarrassed" by the result in yesterday's class.  Well, politics does "embarrass" us all at times, as much a certainty as death and taxes.

More importantly, it is encouraging to see that the radical right does not hold as much sway in Switzerland as it seems to in my own country.  Another measure on the ballot, also proposed by right-wing groups, was to drop abortion coverage from public health insurance, i.e., that all abortions should be paid for privately by the mother.  !!

Because I have never understood the absolutist fixation on an unborn fetus (pre-birth baby) to the detriment of any actual person - including a post-birth baby, as seems to be the case so often - I am very happy to say that that the measure was resoundingly defeated by about 70% of voters.  So, while sanity may have wobbled somewhat insofar as the anti-immigration vote is concerned, there is still hope generally among the majority of reasonable people.

Those same reasonable people surely can find common ground rather than to "blitz" a whole set of mutually beneficial agreements.  Let us hope so!