GLP: Martin Bäumle understands “his” party less and less

“I understand my party less and less”: Martin Bäumle’s problems with “his” LPG

Saying yes to the corporate responsibility initiative was too much for the founder of the Green Liberals and it made him react. Martin Bäumle makes a difference in economic and financial matters. But also with data protection.

Othmar by Matt / CH Media

Three seats in the canton of St. Gallen, two in Thurgau, one in Schaffhausen, six in Aargau and two in the Jura: the Green Liberals cleared the cantonal elections this year. They rank victory after victory and yet the house blessing is crooked.

This has to do with a personal message that the 160 delegates received after the meeting on Saturday. “I understand my party less and less … it pains me as a founder,” wrote National Councilor Martin Bäumle. Confirm the message.

But it was not intended for the public, he emphasizes. Their anger is related to two decisions made by the delegates: First, they passed the slogan yes to the Corporate Responsibility Initiative (KVI). And secondly, the non-motto of the electric identity card, the E-ID.

Bäumle has problems with LPG economic policy

For Bäumle, the KVI goes “too far”, as he puts it. «It creates new unnecessary risks for the economy. This is a problem today. “It is an open secret that he has been struggling with LPG’s financial and economic policy for a long time. She has become too abandoned for him.

Bäumle identifies a new area of ​​conflict within the party with E-ID: data protection. “In the last one or two years, the GLP’s data protection policy has changed significantly,” he says. “The data protection weighting is too high for me, so the necessary digitization push could be unnecessarily slowed down.

GLP rejected more data for the Covid app

The conflict is also evident in the Covid app. Bäumle wanted interoperability with data such as humidity, CO2, and voluntary movement data. The party resisted. “But we also need a boost to digitization in the healthcare system and the energy transition,” he says. “Otherwise, we can forget about automatically controlled vehicles.”

Not surprisingly, Bäumle “understands less and less” his own party. For more than a decade he was Mister GLP. In 2004 he founded the party in the canton of Zurich after a dispute with the current green president Balthasar Glättli. From 2007 to 2017 he was president of the national party.

A movement that works in a democratic and participatory way

LPG has changed a lot since then. She has gotten younger, more feminine and more urban in the National Council. With the lpg laboratory In 2016, the party founded an open political laboratory and therefore a group of experts that would significantly change its own character: the GLP developed from a hierarchical party into a movement that functions democratically and participatory.

This is exemplified in terms of data protection. With the newly elected National Councilors Judith Bellaïche and Jörg Mäder, two IT experts sit on the 59-member board who often have different opinions than Martin Bäumle when it comes to data protection. Software developer Jörg Mäder frankly admits it. “When it comes to data protection, I am partly responsible for the fact that Bäumle is not satisfied with certain problems,” he says.

Praise to Bäumle: “A lateral thinker”

For example, with the Covid application and the E-ID. “Data protection was very important to me with the app,” says Mäder. And with the E-ID, one of the main tasks of the state is to be able to identify its citizens electronically ”.

The administration “is not far enough away with digital thinking,” emphasizes Mäder. You must learn to handle large amounts of data, for example, with contact tracing. But when it comes to data protection, he certainly has points of contact with Bäumle: “We both don’t like that the state wants to collect excessive amounts of data.”

Jörg Mäder praises Bäumle: “He is an important lateral thinker and an intellectual leader,” he says. Let the party he had built in other hands happen, “many would not have believed him.”

“We have to show that we are not just green”

National Councilor Corina Gredig, Co-Chairperson of the Canton of Zurich LPG, says: “A certain diversity is a strength. A party can take that. “And Vice President Isabelle Chevalley says she can understand Bäumle personally.” We have to show as a party that we are not just Green, “she emphasizes, adding:

And the founder Bäumle? Are you happy with the successes of GLP? “A lot”, he emphasizes. “That is precisely why economic and financial issues must remain a central element of BPL policy.”