From SwissInfo:
The Swiss People’s Party, which forced a referendum on whether Bern should join the Schengen and Dublin accords, said that there was an indirect link between the French vote and the upcoming Swiss one.
“Swiss voters must be wondering what kind of a partner the EU would make and whether one should really bind oneself legally in such a way to the EU,” said spokesman Roman Jäggi.
“One can only hope that France’s ‘no’ will open the eyes of some voters,” Jäggi added….
The Swiss foreign ministry took a different line, saying that the result was more of an “internal matter” for the EU.
It added that the French rejection would not adversely affect the prospect of Switzerland signing further bilateral accords with the EU.
Jean-Philippe Jeannerat, spokesman for the Social Democrats stressed that a Swiss referendum was vastly different to a French one. He added that in France, the recent referendum was not so much a vote on the new constitution but one on the current political establishment.
Oh, so now, after the fact, the French vote on the ratification of the constitution wasn’t a vote on the new constitution, but on the current political establishment. But isn’t that what their normal elections are called? And wasn’t the voter turnout – which concerned nothing but the new constitution – significantly higher than seen in normal elections?
The truth is that direct democracy is only tolerated by its so-called representatives so far as it supports the direction desired by the political elite. This is why I argue that democracy in the USA and in most of the Western world, is nothing more than a sophisticated con job. If democracy is actually a good thing, then presumably the more direct it is, the better. If the Will of the People is not desirable, than what can possibly serve the justification for the less than pure forms of its realization?