Michelle Blokliger, deputy chair of the Nidwaldner Government Council, announced her candidacy for Federal Council membership at Stans Town Hall on Monday.
Photo: Urs Flueler (Keystone)
It would have been the perfect performance for Michelle Blochleger when she launched her Federal Council nomination in Stans on Monday. The government consultant, who was little known outside of Nidwalden, presented herself as a woman of business and government experience, straightforward, and with an international background. She comes from the border triangle of Basel and attends high school in Germany for a few years. She speaks fluent French and Italian, and world English fluently, because her mother is from Great Britain. She believes that origin and skin color should not play a role in the professional world of Switzerland.
Blochleger could have been recommended as a refreshing global candidate for Senior Vice President who could also move onto the international stage. Embarrassing appearance in the media due to lack of English language skills such as those in Ueli Maurer in the United States On CNN, Switzerland escaped it. But Blöchliger damaged her candidacy with an incorrect statement about her nationality. She told the media that she does not have a British passport, which gives the impression that she has only Swiss citizenship. Search this newspaper She revealed that while she no longer has a valid British passport, she is still a British citizen.
Senior Vice President suspected of dual citizenship due to disloyalty
Falsehood is not a matter of the state. But after trying to hide the second citizenship, the parliamentary blocs in the Federal Parliament will meet it with skepticism. If you get bogged down a lot with questions about her origins, you might not believe everything she says about the other questions at the hearings either. It is a pity indeed, since Blöchliger supposedly withdrew from the race prematurely over a trifle, because with her, the December 7 Federal Council elections will not be a purely men’s affair.
Perhaps the first vice president’s attitude towards dual citizenship was the reason for its decline. On the other hand, the party always emphasizes how connected Switzerland is internationally, and above all economically. On the other hand, you suspect that people with multiple nationalities lack loyalty to our country: “real” Swiss citizens can only have one citizenship for the first vice president. That’s why Bluschleiger hastily made herself on Monday a “real” Swiss woman.
This understanding of civil rights is peculiar in a country where 40% of the population has an immigrant background, and many of them have Swiss passports. Blochlegger could have handled this situation with confidence. If she really wanted to withdraw her British citizenship because of her candidacy for the Federal Council, she could have said exactly this to the media: she received British citizenship through her mother, but it was never so important to her, which is why she will now give it up. But Blöchliger probably didn’t want to make that statement because it would have aligned poorly with the image of the global candidate’s first vice president.
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– Because of a petty, she might get herself out of the race
Michelle Bluschleiger tried to cover up her dual citizenship, perhaps to please the party. The attitude of the first vice president towards dual citizenship is ugly.