[ad_1]
Mattea Meyer and Cédric Wermuth after their virtual election on Saturday. Image: keystone
Analysis
Danger for SP’s new leadership duo lurks in the middle
With Mattea Meyer and Cédric Wermuth as co-presidium, the SP is on a clear course to the left. He’s being pressured by the Greens, but the green liberals could benefit in the long run.
The choice was a formality: unsurprisingly, Zurich National Councilor Mattea Meyer and her colleague from Aargau Cédric Wermuth were elected as the new leadership duo of SP Switzerland on Saturday. For opponent Martin Schwab, a nobody from Bernese Seeland, his 23 votes were almost a great success in view of the illustrious competition.
The two “Thirty-something” Meyer and Wermuth replace Christian Levrat, who led the SP for twelve years. The Freiburg Council of States was an accomplished marksman in parliament. In the 2019 elections, however, the SP achieved 16.8 percent, its worst result since the introduction of proportional representation 100 years earlier.
Christian Levrat was greeted with applause on Saturday. Image: sda
Will the change come with the new party leadership? The party’s virtual congress in 2020 was somewhat reminiscent of 1997. Also at that time a president who had led the party hierarchically, if not authoritarian, resigned: Peter Bodenmann from Valais. The party rank and file disdained his desired successor, Andrea Hämmerle, and elected Ursula Koch of Zurich, who defended left-wing values.
Permanent seat for Juso
As is well known, things did not turn out well: after three turbulent years marked by internal struggles for power, Koch Knall resigned in Fall. Since then, he has consistently avoided the public. A similar development is highly unlikely this time, because programmatically, the SP had been on a clear left course even before Mattea Meyer and Cédric Wermuth were elected.
This is also represented by the new Vice Presidency, in which a permanent seat has been given to the Juso through a change in the statutes. Social-liberal exponents like Daniel Jositsch are tolerated as “vote catchers” and because they allow the Social Democrats to have strong representation in the Council of States. However, they do not influence the content.
But where should the journey go with the new Co-Presidium? The book “Die Service-Public-Revolution”, which Cédric Wermuth wrote with co-author Beat Ringger, gives a hint. A central point is a society of care, “which is oriented towards the needs of the people and not towards private gain,” Wermuth said in an interview with Watson.
The climate crisis will continue
Public service instead of shareholder value: You really couldn’t bring this new doctrine to this somewhat simple denominator. Is that enough to convince the electorate? In the Aargau elections, the SP was able to defend its government seat on Sunday. But in the cantonal parliament she was the big loser with less than 4 seats.
The SP candidate, Dieter Egli, defended his seat in the Aargau government, but the party suffered losses. Image: keystone
This defeat in Cédric Wermuth’s native canton cannot be added to the newly elected presidium the day before. Rather, the progress made by the Greens (+4) and Green Liberals (+6) show that the Corona climate issue has by no means lost its urgency. Because the pandemic will end at some point, but the climate crisis will continue.
When in doubt for the original
The SP wants to position itself as the “climate justice party” and combine ecology with social issues. In fact, it cannot be said that it is inactive on the climate issue. On the contrary, he is very committed, for example to the “Marshall Plan” presented in summer 2019. Group leader Roger Nordmann is an avid advocate of the transition to solar energy.
The beneficiaries, however, are the Greens, and that is not due to the evil media, but to a well-known reflex: when in doubt, choose the original. CVP and FDP had to find out. If they campaigned for a strict asylum policy, they only helped the SVP. When it comes to climate, greens have an advantage due to their eco-friendly DNA.
Distance to the EU
In the long term, the Greens “on the left could outperform the SP,” speculates CH Media. Danger lurks on the other end of the spectrum as well. This does not mean the SVP, which has enough problems of its own, but the green liberals. It could benefit from an intensified left course by the Social Democrats.
There is currently little evidence for this. The Greens, its ideological “twins”, profit from the losses of the SP. But in the long run, danger lurks in the middle, for example, on the European question. The distancing of the relationship between the SP and the European Union is demonstrated by the recognition of former federal councilor René Felber, who died on Sunday.
The Federal Councilor of the SP, René Felber, hoped that Switzerland would join the EU. Image: keystone
The Neuchâtel man was a strong supporter of joining the EU. You don’t notice anything in SP’s obituary. The former foreign minister’s involvement in European politics is only mentioned in a crooked sentence: “In 1992, his difficult task of bringing Switzerland into the European Economic Area (EEA) failed.”
Switzerland is still bourgeois
Green Liberals, on the other hand, have positioned themselves as a pro-European party. LPG has a race anyway, not just in elections. The last Sunday of the vote was the only party that won all the national proposals. At the same time, it has shifted to the left, which is the slogan for yes to the corporate responsibility initiative.
The double green trend could cause problems for the SP. Furthermore, Meyer and Wermuth have to show how they can reconcile their leftist convictions with the willingness to compromise, the discipline that Levrat has mastered so well. Switzerland has tended to become more progressive, but remains largely bourgeois.
