Two true Swiss stories I must have totally made up
By Michel Heitzmann
© Michel Heitzmann - The made up village in the fog
Any resemblance to actual villages, councils, networks or people holding wine glasses is purely coincidental.
Imagine a village at 850 metres, an impressive view of the Alps in a corner of Switzerland surrounded by France. Twelve hundred inhabitants and a shitload of cows.
Two recent stories.
First, the referendum.
They tried to raise taxes.
People here do not move for the collective, despite respecting it. In Switzerland, people move when it is in their personal interest. The referendum exists for exactly this reason. National, cantonal, local. On everything. You just need enough signatures for the matter to appear on the next ballot.
So they tried to raise taxes, already very high. Rebel that I am, I organised a referendum titled with a populist “enough, this is too much.”
Collecting signatures meant getting insulted at doors. It meant explaining the same thing 179 times. It meant making mistakes and starting over with the right forms, following the right procedures.
We won by a huge margin. I got elected to the council.
The council is the legislature of the village. I was not welcome.
Second story.
The council meets on weekday evenings at 20:00, or 8 PM for those across the big, beautiful ocean, every few months. An assembly of elected citizens with the job of debating and approving executive recommendations.
In practice, it rubber stamps everything. Follows the script under the orchestration of the local chief — a figure I will not describe in detail, because despite this being a story inspired by resemblances, the person does not deserve it. Five municipal officers at the front defending absurdities with complete shamelessness. Expert panels when needed. Agenda. Slides projected crooked on the wall. They could not manage a straight rectangle.
Pompous to the point of nausea. Monsieur X here, Madame Z there — despite everyone knowing each other by first name in the street.
Questions permitted only if the citizen stands.
Debate? Not really. Everything seems decided before anyone arrives.
A closed group has run this imaginary village for years, not because they are powerful. Because they are disciplined.
When only 40 to 45 percent of the electorate votes, 20 percent concentrated in the right families is enough to win everything, every time.
I participated for months. Standing, I asked questions. Got applauded answers that were not answers. Brought issues. Was told that was not the format. Voted. Lost by enormous margins. Developed the habit of not listening and always voting against.
And then, the last straw.
The total annual budget is in the single digit millions. In an interminable assembly, the executive asks to raise a 1 million debt to redo the infrastructure of a road serving 5 houses, out of roughly 365. The plea: “please vote for it, otherwise we need to redo the assessment and that takes time.” I laughed, voted against, lost.
The system was not broken. It was working exactly as designed.
My resignation letter gave one reason. Champions League was a better use of my time.
When dissent is not allowed and people do not want to listen, you change nothing from inside.
You wear yourself down, defeated by design. You become a curiosity, a nuisance, or worse, a joke.
Your presence, even in opposition, gives the theater its audience. The system needs you there to be legitimate. This in a Swiss village, where the worst that can happen is that I get annoyed for a few minutes.
I can barely imagine the Russian at the front, the American democrat surfing the fascist wave, the Iranian terrorised by explosions, or the Cuban with no power — all of them in considerably less enviable conditions.
In my little Swiss life, the move was enough, and fuck it.
And now, with the invented stories behind us, my conclusion.
Withdrawal is not silence or defeat. When survival is assured, things change from outside. Through mechanisms and audiences the system cannot control. Aimed at the right people and with arguments they actually recognise.
Dissent is a lonely activity. That is not a problem. It is the condition for clarity.
The question is not whether the system deserves your presence. The question is whether you are willing to fight when it does not.
What mediocrity still has the privilege of your presence?
Btw, what was the result of voting whether the cows should still wear the bell?
Dissent is a lonely place indeed. Why not invite a friend?