Switzerland Today
Dear Swiss Abroad,
Have you already added your signature in support of a popular initiative or referendum? If you do not enter your name and address in your own hand in the future, your signature will be declared invalid.
This change in practice by the Federal Chancellery, about which no official information was provided, has been met with criticism.
Warm greetings from Bern
Initiative committees feel offended: Thousands of signatures are suddenly no longer valid. The reason? The Federal Chancellery changed its practice.
Initiative committees expect around five percent of signatures to be declared invalid since the Federal Chancellery’s new rules came into force. This was introduced “virtually overnight “, a campaign manager complained to the Tages-Anzeiger.
Until now, it was allowed, for example, for a family member to enter all names and addresses on a signature sheet for a popular initiative or a referendum and citizens signed against their own name. It is now required that everyone enters all their information in their own hand. This is one of several measures against signature scams.
Only after an inquiry by the Tages-Anzeiger did the Federal Chancellery inform the initiative committees currently collecting about the tightening of rules, it is said. Voters will only find out about it today. According to the report, the Foundation for Direct Democracy is now calling for a transitional arrangement of at least one year to adapt to the new rule.
The House of Representatives’ Security Policy Committee proposes that weapons can also be sold to countries in armed conflict in the future. The political left is up in arms against this.
The conservative parties were able to prevail in the commission with 16 to 9 votes. Their proposals go even further than those of the government. According to this proposal, Swiss armaments could be exported to countries involved in domestic or international conflicts in the future. However, Ukraine should not be able to benefit from this regulation.
When deciding on export applications, Switzerland’s neutrality policy interests must also be taken into account, it says. The House of Representatives will first decide on the proposal. This is expected to happen in the winter session in December.
It is already clear that the Social Democrats and the Greens want to hold a referendum if Parliament approves the Commission’s proposal.
Not today and not in Switzerland but still interesting: On Monday, the employees of 16 Swatch stores in Turkey went on strike.
The Swiss watch manufacturer and a Turkish trade union, which represents around 170 employees in the Swatch shops and two Omega stores as well as in the country office in Istanbul, had been negotiating for months.
No agreement was reached and on Monday from 10 a.m., the employees went on strike. Swatch had offered wage increases of 25% for sales staff and between 5% and 15% for office workers. But for the union, this is not enough, especially since inflation in Turkey is 30%.
For the Swatch Group, on the other hand, the demands are “unrealistically high and completely excessive”, as a spokesperson is quoted in the agency report.
History is full of examples of people seeking refuge in embassies. This time it was the turn of a leopard to seek safe haven in the Swiss embassy compound in Nepal.
Nobody had expected this visit. A leopard was captured on Tuesday on the grounds of the Swiss embassy in the Nepalese capital Kathmandu. Presumably, the animal had sought refuge from humans on the Swiss embassy grounds, said a nature conservation officer of the Nepalese authorities.
As SRF News quotes local media, the animal had hidden in a narrow alley on the embassy grounds. Together, the National Trust for Nature Conservation, the Nepalese police and the local forestry department evacuated the leopard from the embassy.
For this, the four-year-old animal had to be anesthetized. It was then taken to a zoo for medical care and observation. Where the predator comes from and how it got onto the grounds of the Swiss embassy, i.e. on Swiss soil, is still unclear.
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