The center politician doesn’t want to go on for another 20 years – but she doesn’t let herself be stressed.
Ruth Humbel during the 2021 spring session.
Is Simonetta Sommaruga stepping down? Or does Alain Berset make a departure first? And how long does Ueli Maurer want to remain in office? The supposed resignation plans of federal councilors are popular speculation objects in federal Bern. Because it often turns out differently and secondly than you think. It’s similar with Ruth Humbel. Her resignation has been speculated for months. One thing is certain: the long-term national councilor is denying her last legislature.
The health politician, who celebrates her 65th birthday on Saturday, has been in office for almost as long as the two SP magistrates combined. In 2003, the Aargau native was elected to the grand chamber, the same year that Humbel’s center party lost the second CVP seat in the Federal Council to Christoph Blocher.
Swiss resignation rhetoric
In contrast to Sommaruga, Berset and Maurer, it is not so much the journalists or political opponents who long for Humbel’s resignation. An impatient party colleague wants to get the former orienteer on her feet and show her the way to the back exit.
Andreas Meier would rather slide down today than tomorrow. The Klingnau winegrower was the first non-elected in the 2019 national elections, third far behind Humbel and Marianne Binder, the president of the cantonal Mitte party. As early as March, the announcement: “Yes, I’m resigning as a councilor for the summer,” said Meier of the “Aargauer Zeitung”. It sounded like a mere formality, as if the castling with the elected incumbent had long been scratched. Only: For a long time she didn’t say anything about it.
This week, Humbel spoke for the first time about her resignation, of course also in the “Aargauer Zeitung”. In a summer conversation that was not supposed to be a farewell interview and culminated in the denial of the opposite, in a political-semantic blossoming of Swiss resignation rhetoric.
Journalist: So it’s not definite that Andreas Meier will take your seat in the National Council Chamber this year?
Humbel: No.
The ascetic and the connoisseurs
Humbel becomes even clearer when she is asked about the media whining of her overzealous successor: “It’s a pressure that can be described as bullying.” It remains to be seen whether this drastic approach is appropriate. One thing is certain: before taking office in Berne, Meier should find out more about the customs of the local political system. Parliamentary mandates are only filled when they become vacant. And it is those who are elected who decide when, not those who move up.
Before that happens, the “Duracell National Councilor” wants to at least win the AHV vote in September. In her 19 years in Bern, no social security reform has ever been implemented, she says self-critically. When asked about her personal successes, she has to think first. To then mention the reduction in premiums for young people or the uniform financing of outpatient and inpatient treatment. Above all, Humbel’s strength was the commission work in the background, the filing of paragraphs and the struggle for a compromise. The career of the industrious politician would be something for the Ovo advertising: not better, but longer.
The water drinker often appeared dogged to the outside world. Humbel then made headlines when she wanted to make smokers and the fat people responsible and make the amount of the health insurance premium dependent on the lifestyle of the insured person. During the corona pandemic, she called for vaccinations to be compulsory for people over 65. But the outcry never really harmed her. Anyone who has been there for so long becomes predictable.
In July, the “Walliser Bote” noted that the head of the middle parliamentary group, Philipp Matthias Bregy, “definitely could not” keep up with Humbel. The native of Aargau had just completed the half-distance of the Zermatt marathon after two hours and 45 minutes. Bregy, who once replaced Viola Amherd, and Humbel do not share the same diet, but the same political passion. They refer to each other as “team players”. The ascetic and the connoisseurs – at least in the Federal Palace, they have long since found peace.