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What a thrill! “Blocher announces his retirement from politics,” reports the online edition of “Blick” on Friday morning. Does SVP’s older father stop now that he’s celebrating his 80th birthday?
Of course, no. A Swiss television journalist had announced his report, which aired that night on the program “10-10”, too aggressively on Twitter.
Blocher was not amused by this. “I am withdrawing from party politics, but not from politics,” he told this newspaper a little later by phone. It will help ensure that the framework agreement with the EU falls apart.
Blocher will turn 80 on Sunday and nothing will change in the vice president. The withdrawal from party politics, which Blocher is now talking about, is also a hoax. He is no longer a member of any party committee. But as always, Blocher dictates the general lines of SVP. And the father of the party is consulted before making important decisions about personnel. Sometimes he pushes her too.
Quotes about Christoph Blocher’s 80th birthday:
Blocher’s dominance was not a problem as long as the SVP grew and grew. Now it is falling behind in elections, it is failing in referendums, and the number of those in the party who would like a different course is growing: less oriented to criticism of immigration and the EU, less confrontational with other parties, more willing to compromise.
Sometimes it seems like someone who no longer understands the world
Blocher doesn’t challenge that. “There is nothing new under the sun,” he says. He refers to the dispute in the party that erupted after he assumed the section of the Canton of Zurich in 1977. Blocher gave him a conservative orientation at the national level, which was received with incomprehension, especially in Bern.
Then Blocher showed how to approach the work strategically: His ally Ueli Maurer founded one cantonal section after another as president of the SVP. Blocher and Maurer made sure that politicians who were in their line always entered the new party offices. With their more moderate orientation, the Bernese were soon left alone. And finally fastened.
Blocher led the SVP to nearly 30 percent of the vote, turned the Ems company into a multi-million dollar company, was a colonel and a regimental commander; Herrliberger speaks of the “trinity of the Swiss state”: businessman, politician, military career. His success was great in all areas. He also built an important art collection.
However, a generation has grown up that sets other priorities. Who wants a family policy that makes the participation of women in the world of work less difficult. Young people call for measures to combat global warming and reforms in the provision of services for old age.
Blocher can’t do much with it. After the Sunday vote at the end of September, in which the SVP suffered four clear defeats, he spoke of “decline.” He seemed like someone who cannot understand that the world no longer works as before.
Blocher is not interested in building a successor
The focus for him continues to be the independence of the country and therefore the fight against the damn framework agreement. This is where Blocher concentrates his energies. It is clear that you will not be alone in rejecting the treaty as in 1992, when it achieved its greatest political success: Swiss voters rejected the country’s entry into the European Economic Area.
Blocher now says that he prevented Switzerland from joining the EU. But they weren’t that far back then. In any case, the electoral battle of 1992 contributed significantly to the rise of the vice presidency.
He suffered his biggest defeat in 2007 when he was expelled from the Federal Council. A colleague believes that the “lack of conciliation” that is characteristic of the Blochers led to this. The father lost his job as a pastor, also brother Gerhard.
And Christoph Blocher let many people feel his disdain in the Bundesbern, where he wanted to clean thoroughly. The Federal Council was not dissatisfied with being expelled from office. Blocher had kept his government colleagues on the alert week after week with a flurry of co-reports.
Blocher was voted deeply to leave office. It filled him with disgust that he had not anticipated the strategy of his opponents. The SVP said goodbye to the opposition, but only briefly. After two years of oppression, Blocher straightened out again. Party chairman Toni Brunner turned out to be a stroke of luck for the vice president. And deep down Blocher was pulling the strings.
An exponent of the party says that he does not want to imagine what would happen when the father of the party is no longer there. The party is not well positioned in terms of personnel. They threatened to break out conflicts that could now be kept undercover, for example between Magdalena Martullo-Blocher and Roger Köppel. “The two are completely different, but in one thing they are alike: one considers the other to be overrated. Alternating “.
Building a successor is not Blocher’s business. He didn’t do that with Ems either. When he was elected to the Federal Council, his sons were ready. You run the business with great skill. In the case of Magdalena Martullo-Blocher, the family tradition of a lack of conciliarism was particularly pronounced.
“Life is an incredible coincidence, luck, fortune, grace,” says Blocher in an interview. Sometimes it takes a moment to find the right word. “Strength is waning, memory is waning,” he says. But saying goodbye to politics, that’s out of the question.
Blocher will celebrate Sunday with the wife, the four children, their partners and the twelve grandchildren. The jubilee has imposed a mask requirement. Blocher does not give up power in the SVP. But since Corona he has been part of the risk group.
A birthday letter: Dear Christoph Blocher,
What’s left of politics when you’re gone? After all, they have shaped the political dynamics of Switzerland like no other in recent decades. They are like a rock that stayed there in a sea, always clear, always the same. A person who, depending on your attitude, you could lean on or passionately rub yourself on.
You gathered the most furious, most determined opposition that allied against you and ignited the passion for the homeland, so affectionately cited by your party, the SVP, in some young people. They are as loved as they are hated, and in this sense they are completely anti-Swiss.
I still remember how he was enraged in 2007 when, during the night of the long knives in Bundesbern, his dagger was pierced in his back and he stormed out of the National Council chamber, accompanied by a convoy of cameras and reporters. What did that do to you?
I’d like to sit in your room on a rainy Sunday afternoon and ask you some questions. I wonder what you have in mind before falling asleep. When you were young, you did have hidden thoughts of joining a left-wing party, but that quickly evaporated.
I wonder what his plans are now, at the age of 80, if he is already drawing a conclusion and if he would like to receive a blessing when the time comes and from whom.
I don’t think you are easily embarrassed. You like sustainable relationships. And people who lend a hand. He has managed to be close to the people, although he is entrenched in Herrliberg like the president of a central bank. You always managed to look at the earth, despite being one of the richest men in the country.
He has always managed to appear loyal to values and family oriented, despite the fact that for a year he lied to the public when it came to buying the ‘Basler Zeitung’. I don’t know how many people really respect you. And if you also admire some. But your balancing act has never lost popularity.
I remember the moment in the documentary “L’Expérience Blocher” by Jean-Stéphane Bron where you were sitting in the limousine and looking out the car window at the fields that passed. You, the man who, against his father’s advice, completed an apprenticeship as a farmer. And who at some point told you: What are you going to do? You have no land.
For decades, the struggle for land has shaped Swiss politics like almost nothing else. They can tell you what you want, but I think you’ve always been true to yourself. I might not agree with you when it comes to who I see as a black sheep, yeah
You were a railing for me. A figure. An attitude. You helped politicize me with your advertising.
Happy birthday, Mr. Blocher,
Su Anna Miller (born 1987), journalist
