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Green Party delegates met in Lucerne yesterday. In the front, President Balthasar Glättli (51) covers up the election defeat for the last time, but the cameras in the Paulusheim are all focused on the door at the back of the room. Is she coming? She’s not coming?
It has been more than eighty days since the industrial accident. Since that Sunday in November, when Lisa Mazzone’s political career, which until then had always been on the rise, was abruptly halted. The Green Party’s hopes surprisingly missed re-election to the Council of States and only came third in the canton of Geneva, behind Carlo Sommaruga (SP) and Mauro Poggia of the Mouvement Citoyens Genevois (MCG). “C’est fini pour moi,” Mazzone said at the time with tears in her eyes, and that was it for her.
Then Lisa Mazzone enters the room. At the age of 23 she was elected to the municipal council, at the age of 25 to the cantonal parliament, at the age of 27 to the National Council and at the age of 31 to the Council of States. And now, at the age of 36, the Geneva woman is expected to lead the Greens from the Valley of Tears as the party’s next chairman.
After weeks of silence, Mazzone confirmed on Tuesday simultaneously in the ‘Tages-Anzeiger’, ‘Le Temps’ and RTS what everyone had actually expected: she is applying for the presidency of the Greens. After all other promising candidates withdrew, this was no longer a surprise. And Mazzone, it’s no secret, is as good as selected. The woman has her party under control, she has made progress and is back on track.
Not much to lose
From Balthasar Glättli (“I am the face of this defeat”), Mazzone would take over a party that suffered heavy losses in the last elections. Compared to Blick, she turns this mortgage into something positive: “The Greens have a lot to gain!” She wants to do her part, she says, as if she has it memorized: averting climate collapse, fighting the biodiversity crisis, highways and the comeback of nuclear energy. There is a strong headwind. “Giving up is not an option.”
But Lisa Mazzone has two problems: her center of life is in Geneva, at the westernmost tip of Switzerland. She lives there with her partner and their two children; there, in the left-wing feminist center, is her political home. That is far from the centers of power in Bern or Zurich, and even further from the reality of a Green voter in the canton of Appenzell Innerrhoden. She has proven to the Council of States that she has mastered the balancing act between city and countryside. There she was seen as a bridge builder who also managed to make deals with conservative colleagues such as Beat Rieder (middle) from Valais.
But it certainly wouldn’t be easy. This relates to your second problem. The one that is probably more serious: a party leadership without a parliamentary mandate entails risks. Crucial things happen in the committees of both councils, and what is discussed there is theoretically secret. If things go wrong, Mazzone would become a party pilot flying blind. Prominent example: Ursula Koch, the first SP chairman, tried from 1997 to 2000. As is known, things went wrong and the Zurich native had to resign under internal pressure.
One of the people
But those who do not have to participate in the council debates also have an advantage: more time and perhaps also a better sense of the ‘big picture’, the broad lines and the concerns of the party base in the cantons. Balthasar Glättli is considered an intellectual, a brilliant strategist, but without street-level rhetoric. If Lisa Mazzone were to be elected his successor on April 6, she would again have to look closer to the base. As one of the people, without a Bundeshaus badge, she might even be able to do this better.
It would be necessary. Because parts of this base are becoming increasingly impatient with politics. Since the 2019 climate elections, the mood between the activist base and the party has noticeably cooled. Recently, the Climate Strike Switzerland group initiated the next level of escalation: system change is no longer just an option – but now a “necessary condition for us to achieve climate justice and a net zero climate.”
That sounds more like Karl Marx than Federal Bern. But what does Lisa Mazzone, the yet-to-be-elected new chair of the Green Party, think about this systemic change? Over a year ago, at the start of the 2023 election campaign, she said together with Balthasar Glättli: “Yes, we want system change, yes, we want the green awakening for climate protection, we want freedom for all.” Is there an impending reconciliation between the incoming party leadership and the activist base?
Lisa Mazzone certainly listens to the concerns about the climate strike: “We share the goal of a more livable and fairer future for everyone. This includes important changes.” Which strategy leads to this goal is another question. The Greens have chosen the institutional route – and have had repeated success in the past. For example, with the coat decree, the circular economy or the reform of sexual criminal law.
The Greens will elect their new president on April 7. Everything indicates that Lisa Mazzone’s political career will continue after a short stutter. The only question that would then remain open is the question of their wages. As a professional party chairman, Mazzone cannot live on the 28,000 francs that Balthasar Glättli received for his office. But the Greens will also find a solution to this problem for their resurrected superstar.
Source:Blick
I am Liam Livingstone and I work in a news website. My main job is to write articles for the 24 Instant News. My specialty is covering politics and current affairs, which I’m passionate about. I have worked in this field for more than 5 years now and it’s been an amazing journey. With each passing day, my knowledge increases as well as my experience of the world we live in today.
