Mitte delegate meeting – Gerhard Pfister remains Mitte boss – News

  • Gerhard Pfister will head the Die Mitte party for another four years.
  • The delegates elected the 61-year-old Zug National Councilor in Schwyz as party president for the third time.
  • They will also formulate the slogans for the vote on June 9th.
  • They clearly reject the SP’s premium relief initiative.

Pfister took over the presidency of the then CVP in 2016. He renewed the party, gave it a new name and successfully led it through the federal elections in 2023.

Longest-serving party president in Switzerland


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Pfister’s counterparts in the other major parties have all been in office for a shorter period of time. Jürg Grossen took over the leadership of the GLP in 2017. Since 2020, Marco Chiesa (SVP), the co-presidium of the SP with Mattea Meyer and Cédric Wermuth, and Balthasar Glättli (Greens) have been in office. Thierry Burkart (FDP) has been party president since 2021.

Pfister’s election was undisputed and was unanimous in an open vote. The party president thanked him. “But you had no alternative,” he said to the laughter of the delegates. He is looking forward to continuing the party’s revival.

Legend:

“They had no alternative,” said the new and old centrist party president: Gerhard Pfister.

Keystone/Urs Flüeler

The Vice Presidium includes National Council members Yvonne Bürgin (ZH) and Vincent Maitre (GE) as well as Councilor of States Charles Juillard (JU). There are also six other members of the party executive committee.

Slogan version on health insurance initiatives

The centrist delegates also decided on two voting slogans for June 9th at the Mythenforum in Schwyz. This includes its own “cost brake initiative”, with which the center wants to limit the increase in health insurance premiums. The delegates clearly rejected the SP’s bonus relief initiative with 166 votes to 27 and 22 abstentions.

The SP initiative requires that insured people spend a maximum of ten percent of their disposable income on health insurance premiums. If this limit is exceeded, the federal government and cantons would have to step in with premium reductions. SP National Councilor Jon Pult (GR) tried in vain to convince the center of this solution and recommended that the center base not only approve their own cost brake initiative, but also the SP’s premium relief initiative. By combining the two referendums, great progress could be made, both in terms of costs and financial burdens.

However, the Bernese Center National Councilor Lorenz Hess spoke out against the SP initiative and in favor of the indirect counter-proposal that the federal councilors have drawn up. Accordingly, the cantons will have to make a minimum contribution to the premium reduction in the future. The SP initiative is too expensive, said Hess. A moderate adjustment to the reduction in premiums is right, but the costs also need to be discussed. Another advantage of the counterproposal is that no powers would be transferred from the cantons to the federal government.

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