Swiss Reject Return to Past

As detailed in Swiss reject new citizenship rule (BBC News), an overwhelming 64% of Swiss rejected a return to secret ballots for deciding citizenship. Also on the referendum was the elimination of the right-to-appeal for rejected citizenship applications. Both of these measures were enacted five years ago when the previous situation was deemed unconstitutional. This is good news, but the way the BBC reported it was interesting:

“The Swiss People’s Party, the largest in parliament, wants the secret ballots back and the right to appeal removed.”

At what point would the BBC evince an opinion that the SVP (Swiss People’s Party, which is actually quite right-wing, not left-wing, as the name suggests) are just a bit off their rocker? How about if they said:

“The Swiss People’s Party, the largest in parliament, wants the secret ballots back and the right to appeal removed as well as the right to use failed citizenship candidates for target practice.”

Would that have given rise to at least a mildly disapproving comment? Reporting everything as if it were all equally reasonable without expressing an opinion is still, in a way, expressing an opinion – if only by lending credence to the viewpoint by printing it without comment.

Also on the menu for the Swiss in May’s referendum was the increased privatization of the insurance system (aka “so what’s so bad about the American system anyway?”) and an initiative to prevent the seven members of the “Bundesamt” from voicing their opinions more than once on issues up for a vote (presumably so that the SVP would have a much easier time of drowning them out). Both of those were also rejected, by 70% and 75%, respectively.

The SVP continues to piss off most Swiss with their issues, as over 45% turned out to vote these issues down (about 50% more than usual). The voting seems to have broken down along party lines, as the SVP commands about 30% of the seats in Parliament.

Source for the numbers cited above was Abstimmung: Resultate & Reaktionen (DRS) (German).