February 9, 2014 is a day to remember in many more ways than one.
It is not an earthquake that hit something somewhere. It is not a flood that engulfed English villages (although that happened too) and it is not some major lottery win that would have astounded folks around Europe (although that also happened).
February 9, 2014, is a day of shame (for 49.7% of the voting public) or indeed a day of glorious victory (for the slim majority of the voters, i.e. 50.3%) for Switzerland. On Feburary 9, 2014, the Swiss held a referendum – they call it direct democracy – in their Alpine paradise. The objective made euroskeptics tick and right-wing freaks rejoice (as Le Pen demonstrated after the results were published): to limit – or cap, in football speak – the number of immigrants to this land of milk and honey (or bigotted and crooked bankers and opportunistic sycophants, as others would say). That was the motion at stake.