The Zug entrepreneur Stephan Rietiker becomes head of the Auns successor organization “Pro Switzerland”. He wants to get the club out of the SVP atmosphere.
Stephan Rietiker wants to free the former Auns from being too dependent on the SVP.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the campaign for an independent and neutral Switzerland (AUNS) was the assault gun of the opponents of Europe. The greatest success of the national-conservative organization founded by Christoph Blocher and the former FDP national councilor and trade association president Otto Fischer was the campaign against EEA accession in 1992. In recent years, however, the once-dreaded association has fallen into a deep slumber and mainly opened up due to internal disputes himself attentive.
Now everything should be different. On October 15, the Auns merged with the “No to creeping EU accession” committee headed by Roger Köppel and the entrepreneurs’ association against EU accession. It is now clear who will lead the new “Pro Switzerland” association. According to the invitation to the inaugural meeting, it is not a veteran politician, but the Zug medtech entrepreneur and doctor Stephan Rietiker.
Collision with “Arena” moderator Sandro Brotz
«I was completely surprised when Christoph Blocher asked me for the position. We had hardly any contact before, »says the doctor when asked by the NZZ. Especially since Rietiker has never held a political office and Blocher was not even aware of his SVP membership. «The request came at the right time. After traveling as a businessman in recent years, mainly in the USA and Asia, I now see the time to give something back to my country and its citizens,” explains the 65-year-old. In order to create the necessary freedom, Rietiker had agreed to be able to engage in political activities when he founded his health-tech company Epilunars Partners AG two years ago.
The proposal to elect Stephan Rietiker as President of Pro Switzerland comes as a surprise. Rietiker is hardly known to the general public. But wherever the entrepreneur has been popping up lately, things have gotten pretty serious. What is remembered is his ultra-short engagement as President of the Grasshoppers Club. After only nine weeks in office, he threw up the beg in 2019 because he could not agree with the main shareholders on the budget of the Zurich football club. Later he wanted to take over GC with a group of investors backed by a Russian investor.
Rietiker thinks big, which may have something to do with the fact that he spent part of his childhood in the USA. He is a colonel in the general staff and politically strictly middle-class. As co-president of the business association Autonomiesuisse, he is opposed to a framework agreement with the EU.
The doctor has already proven his “arena” suitability. In the show on November 19, 2021, he clashed with moderator Sandro Brotz. At the time, Rietiker represented the opponents of the Covid law as President of the “Healthy and Free” No Committee. After the doctor dared to criticize a statement by the SRF fact checker, Brotz said: “I hereby give you a warning!” “The media portrayed the scene as more dramatic than it was,” Rietiker recalls. “After the show I spoke to Sandro Brotz and everything was fine again.” In view of the fact that as a “pro-Switzerland” president he is likely to be a guest in the “Arena” more often, the peace agreement is certainly not bad.
Rietiker would like to speak about his program only as part of a keynote speech at the inaugural meeting in the barracks in Bern. “I want to give the members of the Auns and the other two clubs a sense of unity and set out for new shores,” he says. He also wants to get the Auns out of the SVP corner and thus return to the beginnings, when the organization was broadly supported in the middle-class camp. “We want to become an open forum for everyone who is striving for a strong, independent and completely neutral Switzerland,” emphasizes Rietiker.
However, there is still a long way to go until then. For the time being, “Pro Switzerland” is almost exclusively an SVP matter. As can be seen from the invitation to the inaugural meeting, the 64-year-old SVP national councilor Walter Wobmann will become the association’s vice president. The Solothurn, who announced his resignation from the grand chamber at the end of 2023, is a gifted campaigner. He proved this with the minaret and burqa initiative and the referendum against increasing the price of the motorway vignette from 40 to 100 francs.
Otherwise, the “Pro-Switzerland” board is full of old friends. Former SVP national councilors Ulrich Schlueer, Christoph Mörgeli and Adrian Amstutz are among Christoph Blocher’s longtime loyalists. Also on the part of the active parliamentarians it is a pure SVP event. After all, three language regions are represented with the National Councilors Piero Marchesi (Ticino), Pierre-André Page (Fribourg) and Theres Schläpfer (Zurich). On the other hand, neither the current Auns President Lukas Reimann nor Roger Köppel as chairman of the “No to creeping EU accession” committee are involved.
Blocher introduces neutrality initiative
“Pro Switzerland” doesn’t bother with the founding formalities, but instead wants to get down to business on October 15th. The association wants to support the popular initiative to “maintain Swiss neutrality”. The neutrality initiative will be presented by none other than its spiritus rector Christoph Blocher. This is the first battlefield that needs to be tackled, says Rietiker. “At the inaugural meeting, I will point out a whole range of problems that we now want to tackle.” So it seems as if the Auns 2.0 is a major player from the right-wing camp back on the Swiss political stage.