The 32-year-old lawyer was considered a political talent with a great future. Until she shot at a picture of Mary and Jesus.
She loves to provoke her political opponents – but now Sanija Ameti stumbles because of an Instagram post.
Simon Tanner / NZZ
The painting is called “Madonna and Child with the Archangel Michael”. It was created by Tomaso del Mazza, a Florentine painter, in 1375, at the beginning of the Renaissance. It will soon be auctioned at the Koller auction house in Zurich, with an estimated value of between 150,000 and 250,000 francs. It has not been known to a wider public in Switzerland until now.
That was before Sanija Ameti decided to use this very page of the Koller catalog for her shooting practice, giving Mary and Jesus around twenty bullet holes and posting the picture on Instagram. With the comment “switch off.”
The fuss she caused was huge. She apologized, but that was no use to her. With her post, she lost her job and probably also her political career.
And everyone is asking themselves: How could this happen to her?
The 32-year-old lawyer is not just any politician. She is co-president of Operation Libero, known for its flashy political campaigns. She is considered a specialist in targeted provocations with the desired effect. But there is no sign of that here.
At the weekend, the “Blick” newspaper made the story public. By Monday, Ameti’s apologetic post had been commented on almost 3,000 times on the social network X, some malicious, some hateful.
Former National Council members from the SVP and the Centre are demanding her resignation. The Young SVP Switzerland is filing a criminal complaint for violation of freedom of religion and worship. A spokesman for the Zurich cantonal police told the NZZ that they were aware of Ameti’s post and were investigating it from a criminal perspective.
«Violent act against religious symbol»
Religious circles feel offended. When asked by the NZZ, Nicolas Mori, spokesman for the Reformed Church of Zurich, said that the church is not particularly sensitive when it comes to caricatures with religious content, for example. After all, we live in a secularized society.
But Ameti’s post was a “violent act against a religious symbol.” “It is difficult to understand how someone can be so insensitive. Regardless of the public consequences, one wonders whether there is no internal inhibition to shooting a mother and her child.”
It is known that Ameti is a hobby shooter. In the summer she takes part in the council shooting competition in Stäfa together with Zurich political figures such as the finance director Ernst Stocker (SVP) and the education director Silvia Steiner (centre).
She tells the “Zürichsee-Zeitung” that she is enthusiastic about shooting sports and regularly shoots coffee beans in the basement with an air rifle. “For her, shooting is better than meditating, she says with shining eyes,” the newspaper report says.
After deleting the story with the holy image from her Instagram account, Ameti wrote: “Hello, I deleted the story because people might feel hurt in their religious feelings. As a template for the 10-meter shooting, I needed motifs that were visible enough. I only had the Koller catalog to hand, which was large enough. I didn’t pay attention to the content of the images. That wasn’t right. I’m really sorry if I hurt anyone with that!”
Was it simply thoughtlessness? Or a failed provocation?
She told Blick: “That was absolutely stupid of me. I didn’t think about it at all. I’m incredibly sorry.” She no longer responds to media inquiries.
Ameti usually loves to provoke her political opponents or counter attacks. She is a political activist and presents herself as an influencer. This is precisely why Ameti is the darling of the media and has long been considered by many to be the woman of the future with a predetermined career in federal politics.
When she spoke in the SRF “Club” in November 2022 about the two then SVP Federal Council candidates Albert Rösti and Hans-Ueli Vogt, she said a sentence that later became famous: “From a political point of view, I cannot whitewash any of them.”
And when a Twitter user suggested that she had a “sugard daddy” at SRF and would soon have her own show, she posted a video on Instagram: In it, she looks defiantly into the camera, tears open a sugar sachet with her teeth, opens her mouth wide, and lets the sugar trickle down her tongue.
The post can no longer be viewed: Ameti set her account to private on Monday and deleted all posts.
She also offends the Green Liberals
Sanija Ameti was born in 1992 in what is now Bosnia. When she was three years old, she fled the Yugoslavian war with her Muslim parents to Switzerland. She says that her parents wanted to fit in at all costs in Switzerland. She is the opposite. She wants to stand out.
When she entered politics, she said things like: “There is only one person who has more fun in Swiss politics than I do: Christoph Blocher. That’s why he is the only one who doesn’t bore me.” Or: “I make demands, I break stereotypes. That triggers hatred. It’s the same every time. It bores me.”
Her problem is that she is also causing controversy within her own party, the Green Liberals. When it comes to the seats for the National Council elections in autumn 2023, the cantonal party only puts her on the 18th place on the list. In the elections, Ameti misses out on the jump to Bern. Her favourite topic, the European question, is being negotiated there.
However, she feels alienated from local politics. She has visibly campaigned with verve in the city parliament, where she has sat since 2022, only once: when it came to the fine regime in the closed Langstrasse, which she was upset about.
Party colleagues in the canton of Zurich have been quietly getting annoyed about Ameti for some time now: she is only interested in self-promotion. She is not particularly interested in Zurich politics. She has even admitted the latter herself.
A politician who is under fire from public criticism is dependent on friends in the party. But the GLP has clearly distanced itself after the targeting incident. No one is standing up for her.
Jürg Grossen, the president of the national party, speaks of a “huge stupidity that is inexcusable.” And the cantonal GLP writes on X: “Sanija Ameti’s Instagram post in no way reflects the values of the Green Liberals.”
On Monday afternoon, it was first made public that Ameti was leaving the cantonal party leadership “by mutual agreement”. There, Ameti was responsible for the communications and campaigns department.
Then, less than two hours later, the news comes from the GLP Switzerland: They are seeking to exclude Ameti because her continued membership is damaging the party’s reputation. “Such a post can be understood as an expression of hatred and violence. That has no place in the GLP.”
She should take responsibility and leave the party of her own accord. The Zurich District Party 4 and 5 is responsible for the exclusion process. They are not commenting at this time.
And finally, also late on Monday afternoon, it is announced that Ameti will give up her consultant job at the PR agency Farner.
Ameti once said in a radio interview: “I just love playing with the media.” Perhaps she took this game too far. So far that she failed to recognize what the image of the Mother of God riddled with holes would trigger.
