Roger Nordmann from the SP and Christian Imark from the SVP will probably no longer be friends. The duel shows how fierce the debate about the impending power shortage is likely to get.
The duel between the two energy politicians in the “Arena” shows how heated the debate about the impending power shortage is likely to be.
The two energy politicians got into a fight in the last “Arena” show about the impending power shortage. The duel continued on Tuesday in the Energy Commission of the National Council, the Urek.
As several sources confirm, the two got in each other’s way so violently that there was an embarrassed silence in between. The SP National Councilor Roger Nordmann was still angry because of the attack by his SVP opponent in the SRF “Arena”. For his part, Christian Imark is said to have replied to Nordmann in the plenary session that he could give him an “A . . .» to name. Strong stuff in the otherwise tranquil commission work. How did it come to this?
Imark had indirectly accused Nordmann in the “Arena” of being biased in the electricity debate and therefore wanting to rely exclusively on solar power. The man from Solothurn wanted to know from the Vaud native how much he earns per solar panel. He countered that as President of Swissolar, the Swiss Association for Solar Energy, he earned 10,000 francs a year, but had resigned from the post in the meantime. The fact that Nordmann sits on the committees of three other companies that earn their money with renewable energies was not mentioned in the program.
For Nordmann, this attack was “below the belt”, as he says when asked. Imark kept interjecting during the entire political program, lacked the rules of decency and ultimately did not come up with a solution to the electricity problem. In a one-to-one conversation, he then told Imark his opinion again. What exactly does not belong in the public domain.
Imark says that during this conversation the «A . . .» word actually fell. Nordmann had apparently run out of arguments, so that he himself had to harp on the last “Arena” program in the Urek, according to the SVP National Council. He himself did not attack Nordmann personally, but only wanted to disclose the interests of the SP man to the public.
No round table
The duel between the two energy politicians shows how fierce the debate about the impending power shortage is likely to get. After winning the vote on the CO2law, the SVP is more self-confident on climate and energy issues. With the 40-year-old Christian Imark, she also has a young politician in her ranks who can convey the complex issues in such a way that they are broadly comprehensible. Even the online portal Watson, which is more inclined towards the left-green camp in climate policy, admitted in its “Arena” criticism that Imark had stolen the show from the experienced FDP National Councilor Christian Wasserfallen.
What is also new for the People’s Party is the approach of bringing the various parties and interest groups together. The SVP invited the conservative parties, business associations and agriculture to a round table to discuss new ways of ensuring a secure power supply after the Energy Strategy 2050, which they believed had failed. But the integrative offensive is not well received.
First, the FDP President Thierry Burkart rejected the round table. As the “Tages-Anzeiger” reported on Tuesday, the middle president Gerhard Pfister is now rejecting the invitation. Not all parties and actors that need it are represented. In addition, the responsibility for security of supply lies with the Federal Council.
Nevertheless, there was a tiny rapprochement in the right-wing camp. The delegates of the FDP passed a resolution paper at the weekend that at least does not want to completely rule out new nuclear power plants. Is that enough for a basis for discussion? SVP National Councilor Magdalena Martullo-Blocher called last summer for the construction of new nuclear power plants to be examined.