Amazing Bern elections –
The overwhelming sign of the left-wing city against the spirit of the times
The red-green coalition humiliates the bourgeois opposition and phenomenally confirms their power in the federal city.
Comment from Published: November 24, 2024, 11:26 p.m
In Bern, the red-green four-party majority in the city government is confirmed: Matthias Aebischer (SP, new), Ursina Anderegg (Green Alliance, new), Marieke Kruit (SP, so far), Alec von Graffenried (Green Free List, so far).
Image: Franziska Rothenbühler
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Wow. Actually. Links, linker, Bern. The federal city has phenomenally confirmed its four-way majority in the five-member city government committee. What a triumph for the red-green coalition, whose joint list was once again able to record an increase in voters – even more than in previous years.
The victory is all the more astonishing because this time the bourgeoisie had a great chance of gaining a small increase in power: a common list that, from an arithmetical point of view, made it much easier to win a second seat. A vulnerable city government with flops and mishaps. A dubious financial policy. A colorful, committed opposition. And yet virtually the entire bourgeois coalition is staring down the barrel.
This makes it clear: the city of Bern has once again slipped significantly to the left in terms of its socio-economic structure in the last four years. With their politics, the Red-Green Party not only specifically attracted these people, but also made them an attractive offer in terms of quality of life, housing, and financial subsidies – especially for well-earning, socially-minded middle classes with jobs with the state, NGOs, subsidized cultural institutions or lobby organizations .
This left-hand spin, which was also partly the case on Sunday national has shown is also a clear signal from progressive urbanity. In times of Trump, escalating wars, macho discourses, the red-green, queer and feminist city managed to mobilize Bernese to vote – against the right, against austerity, against exclusion and contempt for vulnerable milieus.
Bern thus confirms its path as an expensive experiment and an alternative parallel world to the bourgeois, right-wing conservative, masculine and martial zeitgeist, be it in Switzerland or internationally.
What is left out of this project, however, are the own oppositional bourgeois, and of all women from the liberal center. The only thing left for them is a seat in the city government.
Bern’s opposition in the city government: GLP National Councilor Melanie Mettler inherits the only civil seat from Reto Nause (center).
Photo: Franziska Rothenbühler
A lively discourse with more criticism and control over red-green politics will definitely not take place. It will be more difficult for liberal entrepreneurs, flexible-thinking restaurateurs and financial policy advocates to make their voices heard in this city.
Because their representatives from the FDP, GLP, Center, SVP and EVP not only lost across the board, but after this clear, left-wing election victory they were more or less reduced to onlookers in the future.
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