Swiss say no to new citizenship rule

Voters in Switzerland have rejected a move to make it even harder for foreigners to obtain citizenship.

In a referendum, they voted 64% against a bid to revive the practice of approving citizenship candidates by secret ballot and scrapping appeals. Secret ballots were outlawed five years ago by the Supreme Court, which judged them to be discriminatory.

Switzerland has one of Europe's highest numbers of foreign-born residents - more than 20%. Many Swiss said not allowing voters to have the final say on who became a citizen violated the country's system of direct democracy. However, opponents of Sunday's poll, which was called by the nationalist Swiss People's Party, suspect the real agenda behind it was not Swiss democracy, but how best to keep certain groups out of Switzerland, our correspondent adds.

The people can always sense when the motives are racist and fascist and their answer justifies the fact!