Politics: Swiss elections and Singaporean Gugus

Tja, hard to admit, but true: the liberals have lost in the recent Swiss Federal Elections to the Parliament. Even though I contributed my ballot from Singapore, they lost 5 seats in the National Council, buhuhu..

Apparently, the political debate throughout the campaigning season wasn't that sophisticated. Ok, you might think that is usual, but the Swiss standards are somewhat higher for this, I dare to say (at least compared to US, Germany and so on...). But this year, the parties didn't succeed in bringing up the hottest topics which need mending (e.g. pension funds, welfare system, decreasing competitiveness, education, trade openness, and: INTERGENERATIONAL EQUITY), no ... but they succeeded in delivering a "zoo" of issues:
One party came up with a goat as mascot, using sheeps to campaign...

and this caused an international uproar, interpreting racism and all kinds of other displeasing things. Sadly enough, even the serious foreign newspapers (BBC, and some others, ahem...) seem to be unable to put things in an appropriate context and interprete things in a more differentiated fashion (admittedly, this is not allto differentiated here, but hopefully funny; if you're interested in a serious debate about any topic- which I welcome - email me: adrian.i@gmx.ch).
This here is not about defending the stupid SVP campaign (I am member to the FDP, their competitor:-), but reigning in exaggerating reports about Switzerland. We're neither racist, nor more concerned about migration and other cross-national issues than other societies in Europe, but there are maybe more channels to discuss (and abuse) such issues in my country than in others (and so it happens that countries withouth many security valves get disrupted either through a detrimental referendum once in a decade à la française or through the dangerous "live apart and soon against"-approach in some UK-suburbs).

however, it's time for those elected now to act and push through urgently needed reforms.

Singapore does this, but maybe in a somewhat strange fashion (yeah, one big party, so why need discussions?). Look at the recent talk about (keeping) the ban on gay sex. Apparently, the Singaporean society is for once moving faster than it's political class and thus the conservative stance (hyporcritical enough, cf. below) taken by the parliament came under blogging-fire:-)

Is this a credible, feasible stance - to say, ok, actually it is forbidden to be gay here, but we won't enforce the law -? This looks just ridiculous to me, as a liberal, in several ways:
- Legal security/rule of law: How can you be sure that the government in the end does not crack you down? They are entitled to by law, but promise they wouldn't do. So in the end, you're left with an arbitray gov. that can do what and when they want it. This is generally speaking a very encouraging symbol to live here...:-(
- Signal to the public: Does this foster honesty and liberty, "ownership" and self-responsibility? At best, the rule fosters people to act hidden and secretly. I cannot see how such a thing could foster a society's development. With this rule, the gov. obviously is ok with allowing the society to break the rules unless it deems its extent as inappropriate.
- The fear that gays would start to dominate/influence the mainstream and disrupt values: Maybe Kasper-Li erred in reading his notes. What kind of funny argument is this? Does he fear that society is unable (or unwilling) to tolerate diversity? Why then does Singapore take so much pride in promoting it's cultural and ethnical diversity? Or does he belief he knows it better than the public and has to educate them (the old top-down story)?

(but these are maybe only some hastily keyed down points of a stupid white man)