Sunday’s vote: speeding up direct democracy

The authorities are taking too long to put people's initiatives to a nationwide vote, according to the supporters of a measure to speed up the process, which will be put to a referendum on March 12.

The authorities are taking too long to put people’s initiatives to a nationwide vote, according to the supporters of a measure to speed up the process, which will be put to a referendum on March 12.

The Swiss people will have to decide whether they want issues put to a popular vote within a maximum of 12 months. A people’s initiative, which is a proposal for a change to the constitution, must be put to a nationwide vote if it can gather at least 100,000 signatures.

But it has been known to take up to nine years before an initiative is put to a popular vote, by which time, critics say, the public will have lost interest in an issue. Although in 1997 a maximum of 39 months was instituted to shorten the procedure, many Swiss want that time-frame to be slashed even further.

The idea for a 12-month time limit was the brain-child of Karl Schweri, head of discount supermarket chain, Denner. He and his supporters argue that the current time-cap does not respect citizens’ needs.

The People’s Party is the only government party which backs the proposal. Its spokeswoman, Irene Schellenberg, does not agree with critics who say slashing the time-span would trivialize the process by giving decision-makers far too little time to seriously consider the issues and produce counter-proposals.

“It’s not reducing it just to 12 months. You have to consider that there are 18 months before which the initiative is given to the government, and during that time preparations can get underway,” she added.

The Denner initiative itself took just over two years to be put to a vote, well within the 39-month time-cap. That was introduced to avoid a repeat of health insurance fiasco, which took nine years to come to fruition. The government and parliament say the time limit on bringing an initiative to a vote is satisfactory, and are calling on the Swiss to turn down the Denner plan.

Guido Schommer, spokesman for the Radical Party, says reducing the time-frame would deprive the government, parliament and people of the time needed to discuss an issue in depth.

“You cannot know whether an issue will be put to a vote until 100,000 signatures have been collected, so it is only then that a counter-proposition can be prepared – and this cannot be done in only 12 months,” he said.

Schommer rejects the view that a yes-vote would speed up direct democracy. He says the initiative is largely motivated by economic factors.

“The people behind this initiative want a democracy in which strong importance is given to campaigns, which means that people with a lot of money can support initiatives and influence the population on important issues,” he added.

The initiative is not a novel one. The proposed rules existed between 1892 and 1950, but the government deemed them impractical. Its opinion has not changed, but moves to change the system appear to be on the rise: an even more drastic initiative than the Denner one is on the horizon. Proposed by the populist People’s Party politician, Christoph Blocher, and Flavio Maspoli of the Lega dei Ticinesi, their intention is to slash the time-cap to a mere six months, by-passing parliament and the government altogether.

However, it looks as if the Swiss will deem even 12 months too short a time-span. Supporters of the referendum themselves do not believe it will be adopted on March 12.

“It is difficult for people to differentiate between two, three or one year,” says Schellenberg of the People’s Party. “It is a complex issue – and the people largely believe the government is doing the right thing.”

By Juliet Linley