With an ironic smile, Peter Indra, the head of the Zurich Office for Health, said in an open-air interview with the Second German Television in front of the open door of a tram at the beginning of October: “Basically, a good-natured dictatorship is a good one in a pandemic Way of dealing with the pandemic.
Sometimes it also takes centralized decisions that are implemented. ”The sentence provoked violent protests, which made subsequent explanations by the authorities necessary.
Juerg Altwegg
Freelance author in the features section.
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Meanwhile, the tabloid “Blick” portrays Swiss people who justify their emigration to Dubai with the words: “Better a good dictatorship than our democracy” the “framework agreement” with the EU was not as negligently pushed to the wall as it did last May.
The Swiss People's Party (SVP) celebrated the “rescue” of the country.
There are no debates about ethics
The virus challenges democracy. Neutral Switzerland is currently experiencing protests, outbreaks of violence and even death threats against politicians. Corona skeptics describe vaccination as a threat of mass murder and the abolition of freedom. Lately they appear with cowbells and crossbows at forbidden demonstrations as "freedom tyrants". At the end of November, the measures to combat the pandemic will be voted on for the second time this year.
In Europe, depending on your point of view, Switzerland was perceived as reckless, selfish or even exemplary. In the vaccination statistics, it is ten to twenty percentage points behind countries like Italy and France. The government is just launching a new vaccination offensive. Health Minister Alain Berset has since rejected his plan to bait with money: Anyone who can get someone to take an injection should get fifty francs.
While French philosophers, sociologists, writers and lawyers debate the ethical value of health, argue about law and freedom, responsibility and the common good, there are no comparable debates in Switzerland.
President Macron introduced the “pass sanitaire” to encourage the French to vaccinate, with success and political ulterior motives.
In Switzerland, the certificate only reinforces the critics in their resistance.
Corona is a "leadership crisis"
It is checked together with the identity card, which in Paris only the police can ask for. The Federal Finance Minister Ueli Maurer (SVP) demonstrated that he is not comfortable in his skin when he put on a shirt from the “Freiheitstrychler” and spoke like a sans-culotte: That Covid was above all a “leadership crisis” in which the government was People could once again show "where God crouches".
The signatures required for the referendum were collected from organizations that emerged in the pandemic. They have names like “Friends of the Constitution” or “Maß-Voll”. They are also fighting the billion promised by the state to the media. It remains to be seen whether they will play a political role in the long term; at present they are setting the tone. The strongest party in the country, the SVP, is the only one to support their referendum. The catering industry, which rejects the certificate, decided to allow voting.
The dull debate took a turn when Sibylle Berg criticized the vaccination certificate. The writer, born in Weimar in 1962, was recently named the most influential Swiss intellectual. She warns against a "first step into dystopia". The NZZ am Sonntag then doubted their minds and puzzled over "what makes Berg think that dystopias from science fiction literature are reality". There was condescending criticism from the cultural scene: "Oh dear, Sybille," tweeted Mike Müller, the most popular popular actor. "Really now, dear Sybille," added the publisher Patrick Frey: "But you already know who you're going to sleep with, don't you?"
Frey is also a cabaret artist, but the allusion was by no means an ironic reference to Health Minister Alain Berset, who is also responsible for culture. With government funds, Berset had silenced his former lover - an artist who threatened to blackmail him. He had the government transport service bring him to Bern from the weekend in the Black Forest. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung has dedicated an anthem to the Weltwoche journalist who revealed the affair. The world of culture is silent.
Sibylle Berg's article appeased the opponents of the vaccination certificate somewhat - they are not just taken for nuts - and startled the proponents.
In the meantime they too have organized a demonstration.
In its recommendation for the vote, the government emphasizes that a no to the law would mean the end of the certificate.
In this case, will she consider closing the cultural scene and the borders again?
Without a vaccination certificate, the Swiss could no longer leave their country, as other countries require it.
It has become uncomfortable in the paradise of direct democracy.