2024-04-13 05:03:00
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Analyse
A social electorate, from the right and the left, was born on March 3 during the vote on the 13th AVS pension. A monster? On the contrary, an opportunity which the PS and the UDC will be able to exploit at their convenience? There is no shortage of areas of agreement.
13.04.2024, 07:0313.04.2024, 08:00
The vote on the 13th AVS pension constitutes a precedent: on March 3, the UDC electorate voted with the left. The leaders of the national conservative party were pale. The base torpedoed the slogans issued a month earlier by the assembly of delegates, which overwhelmingly recommended the rejection of the 13th pension and approved the initiative of the Young PLR for an increase in the retirement age to 66 years, swept away by the people by almost 75%. Was it possible to be more disconnected?
Faced with this bankruptcy, have the elected representatives of rural areas dared to say what they are doing to the party’s “billionaires” who talk freely about the people in the lounges of the palaces? Forestry entrepreneur in the North of Vaud, UDC national councilor Yvan Pahud, affirms:
“We are the party of the little people”
“Little people” who, on March 3, took on a “populist” impulse, regrets Yvan Pahud, first thought of their apple. And who might think about it again in two months, by accepting a new left-wing initiative, that of the PS requiring a capping of health insurance premiums at 10% of income. The executives of the UDC pray that their voters, regaining their senses by then, will dissociate themselves from the socialist spending jacquerie. We’ll see.
A social electorate is born
What is certain is that a social electorate, left and right, was born on March 3. A monster? This is not the first time that left and right have voted together. In 2014, the SVP’s initiative against mass immigration would probably not have been adopted without the contribution of socialist votes. After the vote on the 13th annuity, it would not be surprising if the PS base returns the favor when we vote on the UDC initiative “No to a Switzerland with 10 million inhabitants”.
Here again, the wallet: the more inhabitants Switzerland has, the more the housing supply will tighten and the more rents will rise. Yvan Pahud notices the problem in his “constituency” of Sainte-Croix.
“Many elderly people with a pension of 1,800 francs per month came to live here because the rents, between 600 and 900 francs, were lower than in the plains. Now they are 1200 francs.”
Yvan Pahud, UDC/VD national advisor
The UDC elected official cites the place occupied by asylum seekers in the Sainte-Crix locality, while emphasizing that “their management is going very well”.
The unprecedented thing that happened on March 3 was the spectacular shift to the left of the UDC electorate, 55% across Switzerland, probably 65% in French-speaking Switzerland. What to give ideas to the left? Under condition of anonymity, this member of the Socialist Party does not say “no” to one-off agreements with the UDC.
“On the social issue, the UDC is trailing its popular electorate. On Europe, the left electorate, as it stands, does not want an agreement with Brussels which would be detrimental to Swiss employees, and the UDC does not want it either, even if it places the preservation of neutrality at the top of its motives. To which is added the safeguarding of popular rights, to which we are very attached on the left, proof of which is the initiative on the 13th annuity.”
A member of the PS, on condition of anonymity
Our socialist interlocutor imagines that a part of the left electorate, both PS and Greens, will approve the initiative against a Switzerland with 10 million inhabitants. “Some of the working classes will find it of interest, like retired gymnasium teachers who believe that Switzerland and its nature must be preserved,” he broadly outlines.
He draws a red line:
“The fundamental thing that separates us from the SVP on social issues is national preference. We are opposed to it”
A member of the PS, on condition of anonymity
Pure moral posture? “No, on the question of housing, for example, it being understood that we will recommend voting no to the UDC initiative, we believe that the offer, which is not extendable to infinity, will regulate installation capacities foreigners in Switzerland. If there are no places available, they will not be able to settle there. Then, to reduce rents, the law must be changed so that it is the landlords who have to justify their amounts when they are clearly too high.
On the UDC side, we assume “objective alliances” with the socialists. “Unlike the latter, who do not claim them publicly”, notes the president of the UDC Vaud, Kevin Grangier. The main thing is to agree, even implicitly, we understand. On Europe, Kevin Grangier knows that he can count on the “objective” reinforcement of the popular left, represented by the Swiss Trade Union Union, of which Pierre-Yves Maillard is the president and big winner of the March 3 vote.
Does Kevin Grangier want to “wet” Maillard? He recalls that in 2008, the latter had taken up the idea first put forward by the UDC of the election of the Federal Council by the people. Ejected shortly before from the government, Christoph Blocher had welcomed the initiative of the one who sat at the time on the Vaudois Council of State:
“I am very happy that a socialist is taking up our proposal. He is right”
Christoph Blocher, about Pierre-Yves Maillard
Pierre-Yves Maillard did not respond to our requests on this subject.
“Unnatural alliances”
Rather than objective alliances, political scientist Pascal Sciarini, professor of political science at the University of Geneva, prefers to speak of “unnatural alliances”. And to specify:
“When the PS and the UDC vote together against military credits, it is not for the same reasons. The PS considers them too high, the UDC, not enough. When the PS says it is committed to neutrality, it is out of antimilitarism, while the UDC’s attachment to neutrality means a strong and well-endowed army.”
Pascal Sciarini
The social question is perhaps the only area where popular left and right come together for the same reasons, notwithstanding national preference, to which it is not said that all left-wing voters are insensitive. Pascal Sciarini, however, cannot imagine a trade unionist worker eating that kind of bread.
«Capital importance»
Among the subjects that could bring together PS and UDC, Europe is of “capital importance for the future of Switzerland”, affirms the Geneva political scientist.
“We cannot expect any support from the SVP for the Switzerland-Europe agreement in preparation. The right will have to make concessions on employee protection to change the minds of Maillard and the USS, currently opposed to the text. But does Maillard, whose word is worth gold here, realize that a change of footing on his part on the European issue will perhaps not be understood by his base?
Pascal Sciarini
Maillard soon to be overtaken by his base? This is perhaps the main lesson of the March 3 vote on the 13th AVS pension: a left-right social underbelly escaping the control of party apparatuses could in the future give birth to powerful hybrids.
A local section of the Neuchâtel PLR filed a complaint after smart guys manipulated their political promotion in favor of the POP. And here is why the battle is far from won.
In view of the municipal elections on April 21 in the canton of Neuchâtel, the PLR of Locle and Brenets placed four sets of letters in fields near the locality to form the phrase “Vote PLR”.
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