there was a lot of controversy recently around this.

In short, the swiss military department decided on buying the F35 because they got a really good fixed price, instead of going with other contenders, like the French Rafale. Journalists asked “did you really? no other country has a fixed price and certainly not that cheap”, but they doubled down, even published a page on their homepage saying all the stuff the journalists are saying is wrong, gave press conferences confirming that it was a fixed price agreement etc. The US ambassador wrote some statement at some point almost confirming that this was true, without actually confirming.

Fast forward a bit, the leader of the military department resigned and a bit later it turned out that the F35s would be more expensive, switzerland did not in fact have a fixed price agreement and costs would be like 50% more expensive than originally planned, and this was all just a woopsie daisy little misunderstanding. After repeated inquiries and articles that said that this will be the case back when this was originally discussed.

Of course everyone involved already resigned before this came to light (one of them now works in the swiss embassy in the US) and well, the agreement was already reached, what can you do about it, tough luck…

https://www.republik.ch/2025/06/27/das-milliardenschwere-missverstaendnis is a really good write up (german)

Yes, however, in a functioning democracy there are various groups of stakeholders which can all have different opinions and demands.