The AL is successful in Zurich

The small AL creates a sensation and a near-sensation in the city and canton of Zurich. In terms of content, it is dead wrong. Nonetheless, there is something positive about their success.

Instead of inexpensive apartments, unused workshops will continue to stand next to the railway tracks on the Neugasse site for the next few years.

Dominic Nahr / NZZ

What makes a populist party successful? She must have a feel for the right topics at the right time. For a long time, the SVP Blocher style mastered this discipline masterfully. It is true that she did not always win on voting Sundays. But she garnered far more votes than her share of the vote would suggest, with popular issues ranging from foreigners to the EU, shocking the establishment.

In Zurich, the SVP has not wanted to pull off such a coup for a long time. On Sunday, a left-wing micro-party showed her how to do it. The Alternative List, which had just 1.9 percent of the voters in the canton in the last National Council elections, achieved a sensation and a near-sensation with two initiatives. With her Neugasse initiative, she won a wafer-thin majority of 50.3 percent in the city; their dividend tax initiative failed in the canton with just 4,000 votes.

These are more than respectable successes. In both the city and canton, the AL and its allies had governments and the assembled center-right parties against them. For the latter, Sunday’s results are a shot across the bow. They have failed to convince a significant majority of the damage that AL initiatives will or would do.

The yes to the Neugasse proposal in the city of Zurich is particularly annoying. A carefully balanced and long-negotiated construction project, which would have provided urgently needed living space for 900 people, is thus prevented. Instead of cheap apartments, the Neugasse area in district 5 will continue to have unused factory buildings for the next few years. That can hardly be in the interests of the voters.

The promise of the AL and its supporters that the city can now buy the area and develop something else on it has a huge catch: a sale requires a seller. The SBB, which owns the area near the tracks, made it clear in the voting campaign that they see no room for further negotiations. The AL has achieved its goal with feints and deceptions; she has promised things she will not be able to keep.

In the best populist manner, the AL has created a villain, in this case the “real estate octopus SBB”. One must prevent “a second Europaallee”, it sounded from the left wing. In doing so, the initiators brought everyone on board who was irritated by the massive development next to the main train station. This, although one construction project would have had little in common with the other.

But a populist party usually cares little about the facts and more about the effect. AL representatives said openly that the initiative was primarily about “setting an example” and persuading SBB to make concessions in housing construction across the country. It’s a shot that could backfire.

In the case of the dividend tax initiative, the conservative parties in the canton and the government council got off lightly. But they can’t really claim the extremely close result as a success. In addition to the big cities, several conservative rural communities also said yes to the left-wing demand for higher dividend taxes.

Here, too, the small AL aimed at a supposed villain, in this case the “major shareholder” who received “tax gifts”. The business-friendly circles in the canton failed to make it clear what importance entrepreneurs have for the location. In addition to jobs, they account for a large part of the tax revenue in the canton. It is important to meet this with appreciation and not with contempt and ever increasing requirements.

It just went well again. But the AL and its Spiritus Rector Niklaus Scherr smelled a rat. On the plus side, there is at least one thing to note after this Sunday: as long as tiny groups like the alternatives can mobilize such masses at the ballot box, direct democracy in the country is functional.

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