Just so you know...

Switzerland managed to get 9 Medals at the winter Olympics this year. Yes, my little country, the one you all make fun of, little innocent Switzerland managed to get 9 medals. And the UK? Well… they were there too… they even managed to get a medal. Yes, a medal – as in 1. Well done.

Anyway, teasing aside, I thought as you all enjoy making fun of Switzerland so much I’ll tell you a little bit about it. Mainly about the political system – to prove that it does make sense, even if you don’t know the name of the President.

Where most countries have a single person to be their president, Switzerland has 7. 7 people work together for a period of 4 years to represent Switzerland (it’s rather unusual for a person to be elected only once – the average President stays on for 2 to 3 periods). Each one of them is head of a department with exception for the one that gets chosen to lead the 7 – this person changes every year, in fact, it’s almost like a rota system. The 7 people who work to lead the country come from different political parties – the left wing (2 reps) is as much represented as the right wing (1 rep) and family oriented Christian parties (2 reps) get a say the same way business oriented economical parties do (2 reps). This has the benefit that most decisions have been thought through thoroughly, taking into consideration the effect each decision would have on various groups of the Swiss population. If the people still disagree with a decision made they have various ways of making the presidents re-think their decision, they can start initiatives and write petitions. But I won’t bore you with details.

The fact that all the “main Stream” parties are part of the “reigning power” makes it impossible for a lazy opposition whose job in most countries consists in attacking ever decision made by the president and blaming all the bad things that are happening on the incapability of the leading party. There is no time for this in Bern.


Not only do all the parties have to work together to get to a decision – once the majority of the group has made a decision, all of them have to represent that decision even if they personally disagree with it. That means as long as 4 of the 7 agree on something, the other 3 have to go along with it – even if the “leading” one for that particular year is against it, he or she will have to represent the decision made. This is called the principal of collegiality. It's what nice people do :-)

So yes, we are a sweet little country with some great winter sports people, lovely mountains, four national languages…

…and, oh yes, a Libyan threat of Jihad spoken against us.

And you guys still think we sit on the fence… go figure.