[Reader-list] On the Swiss referendum & law proposal against minarets

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

Dear All,

I deeply sympathize with the 43.5% of the Swiss Population that has  
lost its opportunity to improve the skyline and the architectural  
quality of Swiss cities in general by the addition of a few minarets.  
A slender majority amounting to no more than 6% greater than those  
who said yes to Minarets have ensured that Swiss cities stay as  
architecturally monotonous as ever.

Maybe this was done to protect the interests of the Bombay Film  
Industry, who use Switzerland because it takes less time to get to  
Zurich and Basel from Bombay airport than it does to get to Film  
city. They want the Swiss to wallow in provincial Swissness just to  
have authenticity on the cheap.

 From the point of view of the nefarious Mumbai Movie Mogul, it is  
not difficult to imagine the consequences of the terrible confusion  
that would ensue if the 'public' were ever led to believe that the  
Swiss idylls where stars cavort were no less minaretted than Bandra  
or Bhendi Bazar.

In keeping with those on this list who continue to insist that the  
Marichjhaanpi massacre occured because East Bengal refugees were  
infiltrated by CIA agents, I think we should investigate as to  
whether or not the Swiss vote on minarets was influenced by Bombay  
Film Production houses in collusion with RAW to ensure that  
Switzerland remains a bacward, anti-cosmopolitan, provincial, un- 
minaret worthy place.

once again, my sympathies to those Swiss who wanted to wake up and  
see a stately, elegant minaret from their window, and have now been  
denied the chance of being normal citizens of the world. I suppose  
this is what happens when the country you live in gets known as the  
black hole of Saudi slush money. Because, just as in Saudi Arabia,  
one can see minarets, but no steeples, in Switzerland, one can see  
steeples, but no minarets. Are we seeing Architectural Mirror Worlds?

best

Shuddha


On 02-Dec-09, at 11:29 AM, Patrice Riemens wrote:

> On the Swiss referendum & law proposal against minarets
>
>
> Just like that of any other sovereign (*), the room for decision- 
> making by
> that particular Swiss one, namely the People itself, is not  
> unlimited. It
> is constrained by historical legacy, (f)actual context, and  
> constitutional
> precedent. The substantial majority of both the People and the cantons
> (57,5% and 19 out of 23 respectively) that carried the last popular
> 'votation'
> (referendum) purporting to ban the erection of minarets will not  
> remain
> without aftermath, but it will in all likelihood remain without any  
> legal
> effect. With it, the Swiss people have expressed both a wish and a
> malaise. A malaise cannot be remedied without attacking its causes,  
> and a
> desire cannot be realized without addressing and acting upon all its
> consequences. As it now stands, the purported law cannot be  
> embedded as a
> simple amendment to the Swiss constitution, since it contradicts a  
> fair
> number of its fundamental clauses. To make it into actual law would  
> entail
> a wholesale rewrite of the federal constitution in a very illiberal  
> sense,
> as it would selectively restrict or even abolish liberties and  
> rights that
> are considered both essential and mandatory. This in its turn would
> contravene a large number of international conventions and treaties to
> which Switzerland is signatory. These would need to be rescinded,
> effectively turning Switzerland into an outlaw and pariah state. It  
> is not
> very likely that such is the profound desire of the Swiss people,  
> but if
> so, the same People will need to be invited for a fresh, much more
> far-reaching referendum, whose outcome, we may hope, would be very
> different from last Sunday's.
>
> Presently the Federal Council (government) has stated that "the  
> wish of
> the People will be respected". But the Federal Court of Justice  
> will quash
> the proposal, as it has done before with popular legislation that was
> deemed to be at variance with the constitution. It would therefore,  
> in my
> opinion, be better to refrain from condemning the Swiss people at  
> large
> for venting to unpalatable sentiments while pressing for obnoxious
> legislation, and concentrate instead on the underlying cause of  
> which the
> popular vote is but a symptom. Like in many countries in the global  
> North,
> a large swath of the electorate feels disenfranchised within what  
> has been
> classically called 'the crisis of representation'. In a context of  
> ever
> accelerating complexity and 'technologization' both of politics and of
> everyday life, it sees itself as being left behind by an increasingly
> self-conscious and self-righteous elite that has divested  
> ('liberatied')
> itself from its responsibilities towards the commons. And which is  
> enabled
> to do so without qualms of conscience (**) by that most marvelous of
> mechanisms that necessitates neither consultation nor conspiracy:  
> default
> - the true motor of capitalism.
>
>  We are surely heading for most interesting times - in Switzerland and
> elsewhere. But stop blaming the common people for them.
>
> Patrice Riemens
> Amsterdam, December 1, 2009
>
> --------------------------------------------------
> (*) (Modern) Constitutional sovereignty can be basically located in  
> three
> places: the Monarch, Parliament, or the  People (aka the Nation).  
> Absolute
> monarchs have been on their way out for some time. England is an  
> almost
> undiluted example of parliamentary sovereignty ('an elected  
> dictatorship'
> is the usual quip), whereas France vests it in the somewhat nebulous
> concept of 'the Nation'. Most countries have for all practical  
> purposes a
> kind of hybrid form, with one the components in a dominant  role -
> parliament in India for instance - or sometimes none of them  
> clearly, as I
> have argued for the Netherlands.
>
> (**) That does not make elites innocent as a result. Teun A. van  
> Dijk has
> substantially demonstrated in the case of racism that 'the general  
> public'
> talks and sometimes behaves in circumstances that have at large been
> shaped by elites, buffeted through self-serving discourses that both
> exonerates them of racism while fostering it in their actual  
> practices of
> governance. See his: Elite Discourse and Institutional Racism  
> (2005-8):
> http://bit.ly/8Zq9MS
>
>
>
>
>
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Shuddhabrata Sengupta
The Sarai Programme at CSDS
Raqs Media Collective
shuddha at sarai.net
www.sarai.net
www.raqsmediacollective.net