It’s not as if Alain Berset (50) was completely silent. On Friday evening, for example, the SP Federal Council reported from the classic festival in Verbier VS. On Twitter, he was touched by a joint performance by Ukrainian and Russian musicians and their “message of peace and solidarity”.
A week earlier, following ex-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was assassinated, the polyglot magistrate expressed his condolences to the Japanese people in English.
While Berset keeps a close eye on world events even during the summer holidays, he remains staunchly silent on sensitive incidents that directly affect him and his administration.
Now also with his last dropout, which secured the Social Democrat a place of honor in the gallery of the Federal Council’s antics.
private matter?
The interior minister, who has a pilot’s license, rented a single-engine Cessna on July 5 and left Écuvillens in Friborg for France. In the airspace of the neighboring country, the trip then got out of hand. Berset was intercepted by a French Air Force Rafale fighter jet and forced to land. A reconstruction of his route suggests that the Swiss magistrate got too close to a military airfield. Even the French President Emmanuel Macron (44) was informed according to “NZZ”.
Although the head of state in the Élysée was informed regarding the odyssey, Berset tried to keep the incident under wraps at home. As Sunday Blick research shows, Berset did not even inform his colleagues in the Federal Council.
His spokesman Christian Favre confirmed on request: “To our knowledge, no court proceedings have been initiated. The situation did not justify any information from the Federal Council.” Berset’s department (EDI) only responded to media inquiries a week following the trip with a brief communiqué. The Federal Council was said to be traveling alone. private matter.
According to this, members of the state government may only have found out from the media in what unfortunate position their colleague Berset had maneuvered himself into in France.
Pokerface
First screw up, then keep quiet: that seems to be a pattern for the Freiburger. The under-cover odyssey is not Berset’s first game of hide-and-seek. Another example: On May 18, 2022, Energy Minister Simonetta Sommaruga (62) and purse master Ueli Maurer (71) held a media conference in Bern following the joint Federal Council meeting. The topic was the rescue package for the electricity industry.
What the state government didn’t know: Berset’s right-hand man, his then head of media Peter Lauener (52), had been in Zurich’s detention center for 24 hours at the time. A special investigator accuses him of breaching official secrecy in connection with the Crypto affair. The presumption of innocence applies to Berset and Lauener.
When asked, Maurer’s and Sommaruga’s spokesman were diplomatic: As a rule, one does not comment on the personnel affairs of other departments. Research shows, however, that the Minister of the Interior did not find it necessary to inform the entire committee regarding the explosive process involving his employee. A member of the Federal Council is said to have been beside himself that he had to learn regarding it from the press.
While Berset showed a poker face in government, his people behind the scenes were eagerly pulling the strings to get their important employee free once more. Because Lauener was more than just Berset’s head of media. The two-year pandemic has welded the two together, made them sparring partners.
Government members are drifting apart
Lauener was only released on May 22, just in time for the start of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos GR. There his boss had a tight agenda; Talks with the Colombian and Zimbabwean Presidents were scheduled, as well as meetings with the heads of government of Tunisia and Kosovo and participation in a debate on global health. One can only guess that the head of communications was marked by the strict detention regime. In any case, the interior minister, who is otherwise so mission-conscious, “waives media appearances at the WEF”, was reported succinctly.
Two weeks later, Lauener was sacked – and the public was fobbed off with a short text that has little to do with reality: “The former journalist and communications specialist wants to reorient himself professionally,” said the Interior Department on June 8th.
A lack of transparency towards colleagues in the Federal Council says something regarding the self-image that prevails there. And even more regarding the mood in a government whose members are drifting apart more and more following the solidarity forced by the pandemic. A view that many in the National Council and Council of States currently share. You can see that the federal councilors no longer dared to cross paths, says SVP foreign policy officer Roland Rino Büchel (56, SG). “The bad thing is that this mutual distrust seems justified. This body is going through a difficult phase.”
“I will not elect Berset as Federal President in winter”
FDP Councilor of States Damian Müller (37) emphasizes that the principle “private is private” applies. “But these incidents certainly also have a political aspect, and that’s why Berset should have informed his colleagues.” The secrecy is symbolic of the atmosphere in the Federal Council, according to the Lucerne native.
The escapades of the head of EDI also cause resentment in the administration. A high-ranking official from the administration says to SonntagsBlick: “We are working under high pressure to master the upcoming challenges of the nation – inflation, energy crisis, refugees. I have colleagues in the office who rarely take a coffee break. And the interior minister treats himself to a leisurely sightseeing flight.”
There are bourgeois parliamentarians who do not want to elect Alain Berset as President in December. It is therefore conceivable that they would give the Minister of Health a symbolic slap with a bad result: “I will not elect Berset as Federal President in winter,” says SVP National Councilor Büchel today. “And I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the quite capable and ambitious people at the SP consider whether their time has come.”
