Frank A. Meyer – column: Forbidden Switzerland

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Is the Green Party’s share of voters large enough to take the state government seat from the Social Democrats? Will Die Mitte be able to overtake the Freethinkers and gain second place in the Federal Council?

“Magic formula” as the magic of numbers.

On the initiative of the Christian Democratic Party strategist Martin Rosenberg, a four-party government was created in 1959: two liberals, two social democrats, two Christian democrats, one member of the SVP. This formula was later adapted to the changed political reality: the Christian Democrats have only one seat, and the SVP two.

Will the numbers game continue after the general election?

64 years ago, political thinker Martin Rosenberg was not for a moment interested in counting the number of voters. For him it was a question of political power: Freysinne, the first ruling and then dominant party, should be overthrown, of course, in the Swiss style, that is, simply transformed into one ruling party among others. To achieve this, the CVP needed the SPS, which has since taken two seats in the Federal Council.

Not a numbers game, but a power calculation.

So it’s pure politics.

Why is the politicization of Switzerland today focused on voter share? Why is the Green Party’s participation in the Federal Council based on nothing less than arithmetical fairness? Why should the Liberal Party lose one of the two seats if it trails Die Mitte?

There is no mystery about this, since the current political culture of Switzerland is apolitical. The key word that explains everything: neutrality. What is neutrality other than staying out of politics? Leaving the politicization to other states – whose decisions you ultimately cannot control?

Switzerland washes its hands of innocence!

From the Swiss point of view, politics has something shameful and is in some sense an unclean matter. But what is clear is arithmetically based and calculated elections to the Federal Council – objective calculations instead of determining a political course!

The magic formula of the Federal Council is a metaphor for apolitical domestic policy, and neutrality is a metaphor for apolitical foreign policy.

And there is already another numbers game on the non-political agenda: a ten-million-strong Switzerland – a popular SVP initiative.

In the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, the grandfather of the senior vice president, Christoph Blocher, recently spoke about the problems that the round number ten miraculously solves: problems from housing to health care and the energy supply of the education system cannot be solved by a limited number of inhabitants – limited population, limited problems.

Limited Switzerland.

Next Thursday, September 12, marks the 175th anniversary of the founding of the modern federal state of Switzerland. A great thing among princely and monarchical Europe.

An act of political liberation!

Guilty: revolutionary liberals, of course, are also adherents of the Swiss style, that is, a conciliatory approach to Catholic opponents of the federal state. However, they were determined politicians with a clear goal: a new Switzerland.

One term in particular denoted this political passion: free spirit. The most beautiful word in the history of Swiss freedom is full of promises: to be free, to engage meaningfully in politics and at the same time remain sensitive to reality and passionate about politics.

For the philosopher Hannah Arendt, freedom and politics are concepts that depend on each other: freedom is politics—or not. Reduced to Swiss revolutionary conditions:

Liberalism is politics – or not!

175 years after the victory, which still shines throughout Europe today

liberalism, 2023 should be the year of Switzerland’s transition into politics – from under apolitical pressure, from neutrality in foreign policy to the magic formula in the Federal Council.

Apoliticality is the absence of freedom.

Source: Blick