”Who in this room knows the name of the Swiss President?<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the question I asked a group of three hundred expatriates living in Geneva area at the beginning of a \u201cSwiss Politics for Dummies\u201d seminar in June 2009. Around 10 to 15% of them raised their hands. About what I\u2019d expected. And certainly not a bad score: these were people curious about Swiss Politics. Enough, at least, to sacrifice an entire evening to listen to a lecture about it. With another group, things could have been much worse.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t blame them. All the puzzled looks following my seemingly simple question reminded me of a ride on the Cairo underground a few years earlier. It was the final years of Hosni Mubarak era. The portrait of the president was everywhere. His name was on the front-page of all the newspapers. On of the two biggest underground stations was named after him (the other one was named after Sadate, his predecessor).<\/p>\n
It was January and an Egyptian friend asked me: \u201cBy the way, who\u2019s the Swiss president?\u201d I remained silent. I was a Swiss citizen; a journalist, writing on a regular basis about Swiss politics. I could name every member of the government, his\/her ministry, his\/her political party, his\/her canton of origin, and part of his\/her political agenda\u2026 and yet, I wasn\u2019t sure about the name of the president. Was it\u2026 this one? Or wait\u2026 No, this one\u2026 My friend must have thought that I was completely out of touch with reality.<\/p>\n
That may be the case, but you will see in the chapter about coalitions that there were some attenuating circumstances surrounding my ignorance. <\/p>\n
And I\u2019m in good company. As he was giving a press conference in Geneva in 1996, the French president, Jacques Chirac, was asked by a journalist what he thought of Flavio Cotti\u2019s action in Bosnia. President Chirac, puzzled, asked an assistant: \u201cWho is this Mr. Cotti?\u201d<\/p>\n
This mysterious person was none other than the Minister of Foreign affairs and former president of the country Mr. Chirac was visiting, and the two were supposed to meet later in the day. <\/p>\n
Another French president, Valery Giscard d\u2019Estaing, one sent greetings to \u201cThe president of the Swiss Confederation, Mr. Nelio Cellio.\u201d Mr. Cellio had completed his term as president more than two years earlier and had retired from politics.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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