one of the most convinced representatives of Switzerland is leaving

They called him Ueli the servant when he was party president, but Christoph Blocher was still the head of the SVP. Only when he was elected Federal President in 2018 with a brilliant result did Ueli become the statesman. Even the left-leaning “Republic” paid tribute to the gnarly Zurich Oberlander and asked in astonishment: “What happened there?”

Maurer supported Christoph Blocher’s iron course and, together with him and other tough people from Zurich, made the SVP what it is today

Now Ueli Maurer has announced his resignation, and critics are also slightly saddened. Because Maurer, everyone who knows him agrees, can do a little bit like no other. But with few magistrates it is as merry as with him when he is in a good mood.

Above all, Maurer is unique. One who has worked for his fatherland almost all his life – a staunch representative of the complicated Swiss system. A shrimp who founded 600 new sections as party president. A farmer’s son with a commercial apprenticeship. A Landi managing director with an accountancy diploma. A farmer’s association secretary who also built up the largest party in Switzerland. One who has completed the whole slog: municipal council, cantonal council, national council, party president, federal council.

As party president, Maurer was tough as nails. He supported Christoph Blocher’s iron course and, together with him and other tough people from Zurich, made the SVP what it is today: the strongest political force in Switzerland. A right-wing party that is also quite far to the right in a national comparison. A party that serves linguistic populism like no other political force in Switzerland. But also a party that has always accepted referendums up to now.

The toughness that Maurer showed during his years as a party soldier was probably due to the assignment. Because companions who have known him for decades describe a different Ueli Maurer: not a tough one, but a tough one. Someone who is in the office at five every morning and shows up again in the evening after a party event. One that, after a long day and election events in the evening, still drives the carless competitors home. One who once made the Federal Council limousine and chauffeur available to the then SP President Christian Levrat, so that the Social Democrat could be back in time for his daughter’s graduation.

Ueli Maurer is one of those politicians who are ridiculed at the beginning of their career, later feared or hated and finally respected. He found the role of his life as head of the Federal Department of Finance (FDF). Maurer, who doesn’t have his money at a big bank and likes to pay in cash, maintained excellent contacts with both the domestic and the international financial industry. His masterpiece was the Covid-19 loans, which he launched together with the big banks during the pandemic and implemented in record time.

He has the gift of grasping the most complex connections in no time and presenting them in an easily understandable form

One of Ueli Maurer’s best qualities is his lightning-fast mind. He has the gift of grasping the most complex connections in no time and presenting them in an easily understandable form. He was the first Secretary of Defense to push through an increase in the army’s budget after years of security neglect. Later, after moving to the finance department, he took care of the previously neglected digitization of administration with the same enthusiasm. Thanks to him, the National Center for Cyber ​​Security is now to be upgraded to a federal office.

But like many quick thinkers, Maurer also has a temperament to match. Just a few days ago he wanted to give a public curtain sermon to Parliament because the representatives of the people are spending the money with their hands. And when Head of Security Viola Amherd persisted for weeks in claiming that she had not noticed that Ueli Maurer had been negotiating with the French about fighter jets for weeks, black smoke rose from Maurer’s office.

The 71-year-old from Zurich will be remembered in the country as an extremely good finance minister. But it will also remember a decidedly capricious Federal Councilor. If he had “cheated” or got so annoyed by the TV presenter’s questions that he stomped out of the studio in anger, no amount of persuasion was of any use. If Maurer was ugly, he was ugly. Should everyone notice. He doesn’t give a damn.

Ueli Maurer will also be remembered as a Federal Councilor with a strong penchant for symbolism. While the other symbolist in the state government, party colleague Adolf Ogi, cooked eggs in public or stood next to crooked little taverns for speeches, Maurer liked to place his messages on T-shirts. Shortly before the vote on the limitation initiative, he twirled around in Toni Brunner’s “House of Freedom” in a shirt that read “Tell where are you? The cursed bailiffs are back in the country!» wore. It is possible that Maurer got the T-shirt from his party colleague. Impossible that he didn’t know what the images would trigger.

When he posed in a Freedom Trychler shirt during the pandemic, Maurer’s right-hand man, Peter Minder, protested that the Federal Council did not know who the gentlemen in Sennenkutte were. That may even be the case. But Ueli, the quick thinker, will hardly have escaped the fact that the staunch Confederates were inveterate opponents of the measures.

Maurer, who made a significant contribution to Switzerland getting through the Corona period so well, considered the country’s pandemic policy to be exaggerated in some cases. He feared a split in society and repeatedly called for critics not to be silenced. On his travels through the country, he often hears the sentence: “Me törfs efang nüme saw,” he said at a party event in spring 2021. Sometimes he feels like he’s in a sect. “Critics immediately become deniers and unbelievers.”

Such performances brought him not only sympathy. He ignited and violated the principle of collegiality, it was then said. Maurer bore the allegations stoically and with a certain defiance. But when the world was in order again in his eyes, he too was his old, sociable self again. Ueli Maurer was as popular with his employees in the finance department as he had been with his soldiers as the commander of a cyclist battalion.

Not half a Federal Councilor

Unlike some of his predecessors, Maurer never went into direct opposition to his party as a member of the Federal Council. He was not half a member of the Federal Council, but he was never a servant of his party either. If he saw it differently than SVP, he saw it differently. The party leadership often had to bite its teeth: for example, when Maurer asked the Council of States to refrain from “Swissness” in tax regulation, or when he was not satisfied with the SVP’s abstention on linking Tax Bill 17 to AHV financing and continued to sulk.

Disagreements with the party never lasted long. The SVP knows what they have in Maurer, and they estimate that he emancipated himself from the party as a member of the Federal Council, but never turned his back on it.

Ueli Maurer, who has been in politics since 1978, will be 72 on December 1st. His resignation is a birthday present to himself. 44 years are enough even for Ueli Maurer. So much commitment, rebelliousness and creative drive demand their price. Switzerland owes a lot to Ueli Maurer.