FDP-Garcia drops voting rights for foreigners in the canton of Zurich

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The left in Zurich is raging. The reason: foreigners in the canton of Zurich will continue to have no voting and voting rights at the municipal level. The cantonal council rejected an initiative by the city of Zurich, which wanted to allow municipalities to introduce voting rights for foreigners as an option, by 84 votes to 82 with two abstentions.

“The council refuses to give hundreds of thousands of people without a Swiss passport participation in the canton of Zurich,” Juso president and cantonal councilor Nicola Siegrist (26) complained on Twitter.

The “guilty” for the defeat was quickly found: the two FDP cantonal councilors Isabel Garcia (59, formerly GLP) and Sonja Rueff-Frenkel (50) abstained from voting. Had they voted yes, there would have been a stalemate in the cantonal parliament – ​​and the casting vote of the SP council chairman would have been decisive in favor of the right to vote for foreigners.

Both on the Secondas board

Actually, it would be nothing special if two FDP women did not support the right to vote for foreigners. Only: the two women are representatives of the Secondas Zurich association, which has been committed to the cause for a long time. Garcia is president, Rueff-Frenkel is a board member.

The left in particular is angry with Garcia. This had already caused resentment during the controversial party change shortly after the elections from the GLP to the FDP, because the so-called climate alliance of SP, Groenen, AL and GLP lost its narrow majority in the cantonal council. In his Twitter diatribe, Siegrist also alluded to it: “Exactly two votes were missing. Voter fraud again?”

“First FDP politician”

Rueff-Frenkel explains her abstention to the “Tages-Anzeiger” as follows: “First I am an FDP politician and only then a representative of Secondas.” She fought for the right to vote for foreigners in the FDP parliamentary group, but was defeated. She did not want to deny her party.

But even if the two women said yes, foreigners’ right to vote would not be a thing of the past. Zurich’s voters should also have decided – and the hurdle is likely to be much larger, as experience in various cantons shows. Also in the canton of Zurich, a similar citizens’ initiative in 2013 was flatly rejected. (Russian)

Source:Blick