Geneva: death of Pierre Kunz, fighter of radicalism

One of the light horses of Genevan radicalism has disappeared. Lively, sharp, charging with saber at his opponent, Pierre Kunz has disappeared. He was 82 years old.

Director of Balexert, married, father of two children, Pierre Kunz embodied the economic wing of the party and crossed swords with the left with a certain relish. But not just with the left. In the farewell session at the Grand Council in 2008, his party colleague Gabriel Barrillier, former boss of the Building Trades Federation, remembers their first meeting. “He almost burst into my office on rue Bellot, at the time, to explain to me, the building secretary, how to solve the housing crisis and lower construction costs! Just that! I told him that construction costs were largely determined, for example, by wages, which were set by collective labor agreements, and by social peace, which was beneficial to society as a whole. To this, he replied that soft compromises did not interest him much.”

The enemy of weakness

This fall on the hated compromises… it was totally Kunz! Provocative, combative, unpredictable, the man was elected to the Grand Council in 1993 at the time of the one-color government. He quickly established himself as a leading MP, clearly further to the right than Guy-Olivier Segond for example. In 1997, he gave up running for the Council of State and left the Grand Council when the left became the majority. Four years later, when Segond finished his career, he was appointed to accompany Gérard Ramseyer to the Council of State. But the result of the election to the Grand Council was so bad that the party gave up, preferring to rally behind its incumbent.

Despite the maneuver, it was a failure. The radicals were eliminated from the government for the first time since 1846. “It was a time of uncertainty, but with Bernard Lescaze, Thomas Büchi, Roger Beer, Pierre Kunz ensured the transition. He kept the thread going,” recalls Gabriel Barrillier. Pierre Kunz was re-elected to the Grand Council, where he highlighted the difficult situation of the Civil Servants’ Pension Fund, which not only earned him friends.

Individual responsibility

He left parliament in 2008 to join the ranks of the Constituent Assembly. Thomas Büchi, also a radical, sat with Pierre Kunz in both assemblies. He evokes a “positive, positive man, who I have never seen in a bad mood. He thought that a state that is too big feeds itself with work and limits freedom of enterprise.”

“He was passionate about institutions,” adds MP and PLR constituent Murat-Julian Alder, “who knew how to combine greatness of spirit and impactful speeches.”

The former boss of Balexert summed up his positions as follows: “I am a humanist who advocates individual responsibility, meritocracy and entrepreneurship. The State must only play a subsidiary role; of providence, it must become social.” Bernard Favre, one of his personal friends and former secretary of the Radical Party, comments: “He was a deputy who had great credibility on public finances, where he came across as a tough guy, but he was very invested in social causes. »

It is difficult to summarize all the activities carried out in parallel with politics. Pierre Kunz was notably president of the Geneva National Institute, president of Emmaüs, author of countless contributions to his blog, hosted by the “Tribune de Genève”, entitled “Je la sais la musique”. The support allowed him to multiply original positions, from opposition to the UDC initiative on minarets in 2008, to that against the grand alliance of the right in the second round of the cantonal elections of 2023, described as “alliance more smoky than famous».

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