Word: matthey
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...request. Each community must pick a competent panel to decide who among the local applicants is eligible for naturalizations, with the final decision left to the voters, the SVP says. While this system may be more difficult to implement in large cities, in small towns and villages, says Francis Matthey, a former socialist parliamentarian and currently President of the Federal Commission on Migration, "it would play right into the SVP's hands, because of the party's strong agrarian base." Under the current system a rejected candidate for citizenship has the right to appeal; the SVP wants any such decision...
...This stance does not resonate with Matthey, who says the system proposed by the SVP is flawed and open to discrimination. "It would give the voters in each community the power to decide, arbitrarily, another person's future, without so much as justifying their reasoning," he argues. "In a democracy, the voter should have a say in the issues relating to laws or principles, not to other people's lives...
...Matthey says that the SVP neglects the fact that Switzerland needs immigrants to boost its labor force, and, in fact, the country has a long tradition of opening its borders to immigrants and refugees; at present, some 22% of the population is foreign-born, one of the highest rates in Europe...
...These things can happen. What is important is how they are dealt with when they do. There was a serious bank failure in the U.K. when Johnson Matthey Bankers collapsed in 1984, while I was Chancellor of the Exchequer. After a few days of abortive attempts to find a genuine private-sector rescue, I authorized the Bank of England to take over JMB, close the business, and sort out the mess, which it duly did. Northern Rock is a larger and more complex case, but the principles are the same. Instead, Brown and his Chancellor, Alistair Darling, spent five months...
...should not need to rewrite theConstitution to deal with elections like this"says Bryan L. Matthey...