ffs, i know that you cannot deport a citizen of the country! but you can make the punishment equal for everyone by not deporting the foreigners.
*bangs head on keyboard*

it is greece

I'll ignore you, your verbiage is nonsensical...

In Switzerland, the citizens set the laws. The judges study them and follow the laws. It's a very different form of democracy from other places.

...You are funny!

so should the citizens be allowed to set any laws, even if they are against human rights?

Gee nil I think you know what I mean .Murderers,Drug Dealer and guys which stealing my snowblower

Not really. Initiatives are screened by parlament before they are put to vote, and implementation is weighed against current treaties. In this case, it is not a human rights issue.

ROFL...you're not serious are you?????

That sucks for the snowblower, especially now!

I think you didn't understand what I was saying too. The murderers have their day life job and pay taxes. The drug dealer may have a day job too and the guys who stole your snowblower was probably too lazy or too cheap to buy one himself.

By kicking out the criminals, it will not make the country more safe, or having a smaller amount of criminals. New ones will always come over.

I would have less tolerance for someone coming over to abuse the system, take money from the government and refuse to work because is too lazy. Something we see too often in Canada. Oh! You are from this country? Please come in, take this check and this mountly payment from the population's pocket and Welcome to Canada.

Absolutely. That's the idea behind representative democracy . . . that full time politicians will know a bit more than most citizens. Arguably this is an outdated idea since the numbers educated have grown significantly since the representative systems were set up.

Nevertheless, if you look at, for example, the UK cabinet you'll see that out of 23, 16 went to Oxford or Cambridge, which are the top universities in the country. This compares to the general population where 30% of adults have no qualifications at all.

If you put capital punishment to a referendum in the UK, it would be passed. Our MPs don't support it though and that's partly because they've been educated.

So, if they are so well educated, how did they get the country into such a pickle? Sometimes common sense is worth more than academic theories and a burning desire to play "Risk" for real....

Oh great. Citizens turn off your brains and let the government do your thinking for you.

Sounds like a recipe for a fascist totalitarian state.

Wrong country bud. We're in Switzerland.

How people can call this democracy is beyond everything...these initiatives has NOTHING to do about democracy...it's pure propaganda...pure and simple...and once again the "other side" was quiet as a mouse...the SVP spread false information which led Swiss citizens to believe that it's a huge problem in Switzerland...

once again...Switzerland you fail...miserably!

It's called Popular Sovereignty, and is documented here:

Swiss Federal Constitution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Federal_Constitution

I highly recommend anyone living here to become familiar with this so you know which country you are living it.

My earlier comment was because you are putting us all in the same pot, just like this initiative is doing. And this initiative got through because of fear, fear of how the country is going, fear of being crowded out by people who are not like "us". Now some people are making an effort against this sort of BS and it's a lot harder to defend somebody else's interests against those who are defending their own. To be honest, if somebody then goes and says "you ALL fail", then my reaction is most likely to be "you know what? this isn't strictly speaking my problem, just an ideological discussion".

When 20% of the population accounts for 60% of crime, I think it is a problem. Here are the statistics prepared by the Federal Office for Statistics as background data for the initiative and counter-proposal:

http://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/portal/d.../05/01/02.html

Well, they are ticked off and frustrated about the outcome. I can understand that. But this can only be due to the wrong expectations. Failing to understand the country would lead to that. But hey... Welcome to Switzerland!

Exactly, what failed is the integration policy, it should be stricter but also more helpful. When I went to live abroad, I realised that Switzerland is a bit like a special club, a structure and system that stands quite lonely in the world and where everyone gets "trimmed" into a certain thought pattern, based very strongly around what everyone does. Now sure, some people love to make comments about us being like cattle or sheep, but that is usually because of some strong sense of their own reeeeeallly high importance, after all, they got hired from abroad and paid lots of cash, so they must be amazing, right? Thing is, if this place was full of over-individualistic people who think of their own rather than their greater good, it would be very different.

Yes, I know I've said this before. Heck, my Swiss friends frown at some of the things I say and do, as they consider them "outrageous" and "typically British", so I wonder what it must be like to be "pure" Swiss. Quite a few people come here with no idea of just how rule-bound and structured our society is and don't feel the need to stick to these rules anyway as they're only here for all the benefits that are to be had. A bit like a parasite, really. Now there are also Swiss people like that, but I think the general idea is that a state should only have to look after it's own messes, not everybody else's too. And that brings on the discussion over those that grew up here, which is far too long and complicated for a Sunday night.

All I can say, something has rapidly deteriorated in this country, there are numbers to suggest a correlation with a foreign element and everybody loves what seems to be a quick fix. This does not make us a bunch of closet fascists.

I still would like to see some stats which could back this up.

(Not the faked ones by the SVP.)

See post #376 above with a link to the official Swiss government statistics.