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At 8 am sharp, Schaffhausen Principal Resident Lorenz Laich (57, FDP) welcomed the cantonal councils to the meeting at the Park Casino Schaffhausen today. Initially he recounted the absences: “On the part of the government, councilor Christian Amsler (56) himself had apologized for today’s meetings due to illness”.
Many parliamentarians from a canton might have noticed. Because: On Sunday, the people of Schaffhausen did not elect Amsler to the government again. A resounding slap for the politician, known beyond the canton, who spent ten years on the governing council. Already on election day, the FDPler did not show up: media workers and party friends waited in vain for him at the Schaffhausen town hall roundabout.
Strong punch
Amsler only announced that he was disappointed in a written statement after the election. “First I have to digest this hit personally.” Now he will turn to new ways. “From January 2021, the politician Christian Amsler will be history.”
Until then, there is still work to be done for the liberals. But obviously, Amsler doesn’t feel like doing that. Furthermore, the meeting at the Cantonal Council would have been doubly uncomfortable for Amsler. On the one hand, it is uncomfortable to have to appear before colleagues on the Cantonal Council so soon after being rejected. On the other hand, there is an issue on the Cantonal Council agenda that Amsler occasionally brought up: the issue of the Schaffhausen school dental clinic.
School dental clinic as a stumbling block
Schaffhausen dentists have been referring schoolchildren from the cantonal school’s dental clinic to their private practice for years. Two months before the elections, a parliamentary inquiry commission (PUK) made harsh accusations to the government and, above all, to the responsible education director, Amsler. The unacceptable poaching was “obvious,” but the government hardly bothered. PUK president Regula Widmer (GLP) said in the “NZZ”: “The supervision was not exercised.”
Today the cantonal councils of Schaffhausen are debating the report of the PUK dental clinic. Amsler was scheduled to be available to answer questions, as he did two weeks ago. Even without a meeting, the elected government councilor knows the damage to his image that the matter has brought: “I have always represented Schaffhausen with great commitment in the rest of Switzerland and in other countries close to the border,” he writes in his statement. . However, this did not count in the election campaign, “because in the end only the concentrated allocation of scapegoats around the school dental clinic was in the foreground.”
Hard hit for Amsler
For Amsler, voting against is not the first, but it is by far the most painful political defeat. Two years ago he ran for the Federal Council to succeed Johann Schneider-Ammann (68). However, he had no chance against the current Justice Minister Karin Keller-Sutter (56). Last year, Amsler tried the jump to Bern for the second time. But his candidacy for the Council of States ended in a debacle: the governing council received only 12 percent of the votes.
Christian Amsler was not available for BLICK on Monday.
