Every year the party leaders of the SVP meet in the spa hotel Bad Horn. Also this January, the representatives of the People’s Party met in the hotel of former Vice President Walter Frey (79). The goal: location determination. Quo vadis please? Where should the journey go now?
Former Federal Councilor Ueli Maurer (72) was surprisingly clear about his party. You are at a dead end, he judged frankly, according to various media. The SVP no longer has the same winning image as before. According to Maurer, the Greens and the Left are to blame for driving Switzerland and the SVP to a dead end with them.
Criticism of the SVP
But the work of the “Sünneli” party also ends up in the crossfire. There was too little programmatic work. “We can’t just point out that Switzerland is in a dead end, we have to say, ‘The SVP will get you out, come with me!'”
Criticism of the party leadership is not new. Both former party chairman and current federal councilor Albert Rösti (55) and party leader Marco Chiesa (48) received a lot of criticism. In the run-up to the Bundesrat elections, there was repeated talk of a lack of leadership.
The SVP retold
Maurer, however, takes a bigger approach. He wants to reinvent the SVP, tell it again. “We need a new, positive story,” he recently said in the latest interview as a federal councilor of the “NZZ”. He does not see the future of the SVP as a pure opposition party.
The SVP must learn that as the strongest party it must take its responsibility and help shape it, he demands. He was not referring to compromises on the core issues, such as joining the EU, which the party strictly rejects. But instead of demanding the most, the party should work with others to achieve the best.
It is surprising that Maurer is calling his party to agreement and compromise, as he was a driving force behind the SVP’s tough, provocative course in his time as party chairman. (Tom)