Summary
Swiss voters rejected a $5.6 billion (CHF 5 billion) motorway expansion plan (52.7%) and two proposals to ease eviction rules and tighten subletting controls (53.8% and 51.6%).
Environmental concerns and housing fairness were key to the opposition.
Meanwhile, a healthcare reform to standardize funding for outpatient and inpatient care narrowly passed (53.3%), marking a rare success for health policy changes.
The results highlight public resistance to certain government-backed initiatives.
Voter turnout was 45%.
Our political system might work better than most western democracies, but your claim is categorically untrue.
The elite have strong power in the Swiss system
I’m sick of the upper middle classes in Switzerland consistently saying the system is representative of the wider population.
It’s representative of their classes, not those of us who get by below the poverty wage, not those of us stuck in oppressive nursing home setups, not those of us who fall through the cracks of a system which is so focused on stability it often ignores needed reform. We have some of the worst disability rights laws in western europe. We only gave women the right to vote in the 70s (and in parts of the country, the 90s).
It takes a fundamentally fucked up country where in the same village of population 10,000, disabled people can starve to death whilst being unable to afford medical care, while a 5 minute drive away, there is the villa of a billionaire.
To add to that:
We have a militia system, which on first glance is a good thing. But then you realize that a plurality of parliamentarians are lawyers, business-people, advisors and other higher economic class individuals. Too many of them are on boards of directors or other high management positions in corporations. Compared to other western countries, it is more mixed, but clear conflicts of interests are present and it is still skewed towards the economic elite. The reasons for this are many, but among others voters getting such individuals in high positions can be paired with people in lower economic classes having less opportunities or motivation to run for office. Which is why local organizing is of utmost importance. You can see the effect in parliaments on a local level: They far more closely represent the population than on a state or federal level. Then there’s party politics, but that’ll get too long, soooo: Next point:
The media landscape: Your point about a billionaire having great impact on the electoral landscape extends to the media. You can count the owners of the local papers on one hand. Said billionaire owns some of them as well as an own TV channel if you can call it that. And there’s a general animosity towards the SRG SSR with political and legislative attacks to weaken it.
Just to be fair, the claim that “our national bank is 50% owned by private companies” isn’t entirely accurate—it’s actually 45%. The Swiss National Bank is designed to be independent, and that’s why it’s not owned solely by the federal government, provincial governments, or private entities. This mix ensures that no single group has too much influence over its operations, and the structure has proven to work flawlessly for decades. Private shareholders have limited rights, dividends are capped, and monetary policy is fully independent.
The federal government has no ownership. It’s owned 55% split across the canton’s and 45% private shareholders.
In practice that means basically if 2 cantons and the private companies agree on something, and the 24 other cantons disagree, the private companies get there way.
It’s an institutionalisation of corporatism.
In practice it loses billions of CHF in public funds, on purpose, to make sure the CHF doesn’t become too strong, the CHF becoming stronger benefits the population, but hurts the companies because their prices become less competitive. It’s a system made to serve the companies as much as the people.
There are 100k shares and voting rights for private shareholders are capped at 100 shares. So there would have to be 450 private entities each owning 100 shares all agreeing to enact what you propose.
As of the end of 2023, private sector shareholders held 26,559 shares, accounting for 26.9% of the share capital. Of these, 15,116 were voting shares, representing 22.8% of the total voting rights.