Macho meow
Column: Today, a member of the government deserves praise. Once in a while is no big deal. And in these times of rampant PR, what’s the point of praise anyway, asks Oliver Fahrni.
Column Today, a member of the government is to be commended. Once is not a time. And in times of rampaging PR, what does praise weigh...No, not the Minister for and against Justice. He has other worries, such as caricatures. After all, he has just won two votes against foreigners, and he will present us with this topic in all conceivable variations in the election year 2007, seconded by the compliant part of the journalists. No small achievement also his victim gesture. He crafts the laws, he has economic power, he commands the largest communications machine ever owned by a Swiss politician, and a weekly newspaper and ample space in all other media; the mainstream is neoliberal, the government is far to the right, and corporate profits are flashing astronomically - yet this man manages to portray Switzerland as a threatened country in the clutches of a red statist elite. Untruthful like much about him. Actually, a case for the media...The chapeau, on the other hand, we lift shortly before a Federal Councillor: Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey is the other Switzerland. Persistently and against some hostility, she has criticized the Israeli war campaign in Lebanon (and the attack by Hezbollah), called for an end to the fighting, for a rapid withdrawal. In Palestine, it insists on a negotiated settlement (Geneva Initiative). A new UN Human Rights Council was created under her impetus. She cleaned up the diplomatic corps after the visa affair - personally, in Islamabad. Women's rights, also in the FDFA, the fight against human trafficking, reform of the United Nations, conflict prevention and peacekeeping, humanitarian aid and development - MCR sets priorities. The Swiss presence gets it. "In human rights and international law issues, we have great credibility. We can deliver, and many countries expect us to."
It calls this active neutrality. This is irritating, especially for those who think that the lower the country's political profile, the better the offshore financial center. In this area, at least, Switzerland is now the world's number one, and the basis for business is a hissed "shhhh.
Not that Calmy-Rey would revise fundamental foreign policy positions - rather, she is working to bring this self-image of a country of freedom and human rights into line with its practice. She does not raise a dissenting voice, for example on the Federal Council's cover-up of the secret U.S. prisoner transports - but she insists on the binding nature of international law at every opportunity.
Probably, all this would be only half as enervating for the isolationists if politics and the media would support them with the usual macho grumblings. The leading Helvetic newspaper murmured barely audibly about emotional politics that knew nothing about military necessities. With MCR such things do not catch on. Even less any attempt to use her femininity against her, to put hairstyle, husband or tenue in front of her (not even in the softcore version "amazing how well she combines emotions and professionalism"). She has tamed the laws of attention economy. Smilingly determined, sometimes dressed in urbane parlando, is her appearance. Sovereign in the true sense of the word. Loosely she carries a message that could read: I may be doing a very good job because I am a woman. Turbulent times need stateswomen.
Presumably, the commodity aesthetics of gender have no grip on her because she doesn't do that, she is. The former entrepreneur and Geneva head of government, grandmother and minister has nothing to prove. Something like this can infuriate someone like SVP leader Ueli Maurer. Calmy-Rey should be deprived of the FDFA, he said, when she brought up the idea of a Swiss seat on the UN Security Council. This is Black & Decker country: Anything overhanging the hedge, anything reaching for the light, is immediately trimmed straight. Could it be that Switzerland does not deserve its foreign minister?
Oliver Fahrni is a freelance journalist, was deputy editor-in-chief of Weltwoche until 2001, then foreign editor-in-chief of Hamburger Woche.
It calls this active neutrality. This is irritating, especially for those who think that the lower the country's political profile, the better the offshore financial center. In this area, at least, Switzerland is now the world's number one, and the basis for business is a hissed "shhhh.
Not that Calmy-Rey would revise fundamental foreign policy positions - rather, she is working to bring this self-image of a country of freedom and human rights into line with its practice. She does not raise a dissenting voice, for example on the Federal Council's cover-up of the secret U.S. prisoner transports - but she insists on the binding nature of international law at every opportunity.
Probably, all this would be only half as enervating for the isolationists if politics and the media would support them with the usual macho grumblings. The leading Helvetic newspaper murmured barely audibly about emotional politics that knew nothing about military necessities. With MCR such things do not catch on. Even less any attempt to use her femininity against her, to put hairstyle, husband or tenue in front of her (not even in the softcore version "amazing how well she combines emotions and professionalism"). She has tamed the laws of attention economy. Smilingly determined, sometimes dressed in urbane parlando, is her appearance. Sovereign in the true sense of the word. Loosely she carries a message that could read: I may be doing a very good job because I am a woman. Turbulent times need stateswomen.
Presumably, the commodity aesthetics of gender have no grip on her because she doesn't do that, she is. The former entrepreneur and Geneva head of government, grandmother and minister has nothing to prove. Something like this can infuriate someone like SVP leader Ueli Maurer. Calmy-Rey should be deprived of the FDFA, he said, when she brought up the idea of a Swiss seat on the UN Security Council. This is Black & Decker country: Anything overhanging the hedge, anything reaching for the light, is immediately trimmed straight. Could it be that Switzerland does not deserve its foreign minister?
Oliver Fahrni is a freelance journalist, was deputy editor-in-chief of Weltwoche until 2001, then foreign editor-in-chief of Hamburger Woche.
