Daniel Sormanni: A pugnacious political sovereignist in Bern
The Geneva Citizens’ Movement (MCG in French) has succeeded in getting three representatives elected to the Swiss Parliament for the current term 2023-2027. Aged 73, Daniel Sormanni is the new representative in Bern of this regionalist and populist party.
We meet Daniel Sormanni in a café close to the Federal Palace in mid-January. The discussion quickly focuses on the future of the SBC, the Swiss public broadcasting corporation, of which SWI swissinfo.ch is part. The newly elected MCG parliamentarian feels he must give his opinion about the “SBC initiative” submitted by the Swiss People’s Party, which aims to cap the nationwide annual radio and television fee at CHF200, down from the CHF335 where it stands at present.
Sormanni is against this proposal because he believes that Swiss residents will have to pay even more to see sporting events live on private channels. “It is presented as supporting the people’s purchasing power, but it’s an illusion,” the Geneva politician explains.
Still, at the start of the year, Sormanni took issue with the SBC when he filed a complaint against Swiss public television, RTS. The broadcaster had decided to cancel the airing of a film starring Gérard Depardieu, accused of multiple charges of rape and sexual assault.
Last October, 56 new parliamentarians were elected to power. The Swiss People’s Party, The Centre and the Social Democratic Party made most gains in the national elections of 2023 and have most newcomers in their ranks.
By contrast, the Green Party, which was the main loser in the elections, was not able to send new representatives to Bern. In this series of articles, SWI swissinfo.ch provides a portrait of nine parliamentarians who are taking their first steps in the federal legislature.
In Sormanni’s opinion a “cancellation” of this sort, which triggered a fierce public controversy, amounts to censorship. As he sees it: “it’s not up to RTS, to tell people what they ought to watch on TV”.
‘The Fischer affair’
That is precisely Sormanni’s style: vindictive and uncompromising but at the same time reluctant to be pigeonholed or give up his independence as a parliamentarian. In Geneva, Sormanni has been engaged in politics for nearly 50 years, first on the municipal level and then for the canton. People know him for his pugnacity and his direct challenges to the executive branch of government.
Jérémy Seydoux, news editor at Léman Bleu, the local TV channel in Geneva, stresses: “He’s a very active politician, resolute and not afraid to shake things up. He believes firmly in parliament overseeing the government’s actions and often raises legitimate issues”.
In August 2023, two months before the federal elections, Sormanni made headlines in his canton by filing criminal charges against the former Green Party Minister, Fabienne Fischer, whom he accused of having utilised employees in her ministry to organise her electoral campaign. The investigation is ongoing and the former minister denies the charge.
Benefiting from the ‘Poggia effect’
Seydoux explains: “Never had such a quantity of emails from civil servants been disclosed to the public at once. These revelations, following Daniel Sormanni’s requests for information, have had enormous consequences in Geneva”.
The key player admits that the “Fischer affair” put him in the spotlight and probably helped him secure a seat in the House of Representatives. Nevertheless, he argues that the Geneva Citizens’ Movement’s return to national level politics – after the party gained one seat in the Senate and two in the House of Representatives, whereas it had been absent from parliament during the previous legislative term – is mainly the result of two factors: Mauro Poggia, the very popular former Geneva Minister for Health who has been elected to the Senate and the broader international context of global insecurity. These two factors enabled the Geneva Citizens’ Movement to take votes away from both the radical left and the Green Party.
But some also criticise Sormanni; they claim that as a representative he stops at nothing to get in the news. Delphine Klopfenstein, a parliamentarian and head of the Green Party in Geneva, is a critic: “He is stubborn and pugnacious, one has to admit, but he manufactures media frenzy for political gains. Essentially, up until today, his practical initiatives for the population have been poor. In Bern, he will have to be more inventive than claiming ‘one can simply just…’ ”
Modest origins
When confronted with these accusations, Sormanni’s first reaction is one of surprise. He then proceeded to list his practical achievements in politics. One of them is the creation of Fondetec, a foundation based in Geneva which helps businesses starting up. He defended himself: “I did it all by myself, including drawing up the statutes of the foundation. I was its director until 2003 and it is still running today. Probably Klopfenstein has forgotten about that”.
In Geneva, Sormanni is also portrayed as somewhat opportunistic. He was a member of the Social Democrats during the first part of his political career. Later in 2011 he joined the Geneva Citizens’ Movement which had been set up six years earlier by Eric Stauffer. That year the Movement was to become the big winner at the local elections. However, most political analysts place the protest party on the far right of the political spectrum, mainly because of its nationalistic and anti-migrant standpoints. That is to say, to the exact opposite of the Social Democrats.
Sormanni acknowledges his change of orientation. Having begun his working life as a car mechanic and still living in a housing cooperative in Vieusseux, a working-class neighbourhood of Geneva, he maintains: “I’m not the one who has changed, it’s the Social Democratic Party which has. It has abandoned the working class and now only defends those who are better off”.
When asked if there isn’t a contradiction in belonging to a political party which has several times been denounced for running campaigns against French cross-border workers while he claims to defend the working class, Sormanni replies: “We are neither racist, nor xenophobic, we simply say ‘our people first’. The people living in Geneva, whether they are Swiss nationals or foreigners, must have priority when it comes to jobs”.
Close connections to the Unions
All three parliamentarians of the Geneva Citizens’ Movement in Bern – Mauro Poggia, Roger Golay and Daniel Sormanni – sit in the Swiss People’s Party group, the biggest one in parliament. Poggia would have preferred to ally with The Centre, but parliament law prohibits members of the same party from sitting in two different groups.
“When it comes to sovereignty, independence, neutrality or security, we agree a hundred percent with the Swiss People’s Party,” Sormanni says. But in the fields of economics and social issues there are numerous disagreements. With a strong base among the public servants in Geneva, the Geneva Citizens’ Movement is close to the unions on the subject of salaries and pensions.
Sormanni, whom analysts place on the left wing of the Geneva Citizen’s Movement, admits that he feels a lot of respect and sympathy for Pierre-Yves Maillard, the president of the Swiss Trade Union Federation. On March 3, they will both vote against the raising of the retirement age to 66 years, and in favour of the introduction of a 13th pension payment. “It’s not right that more and more Swiss nationals have to go and live abroad in order to live a decent life once they retire.”
Gaining one’s freedom
The newly elected representative is aware that it will be much more difficult for him to get his ideas across in Bern than it was in Geneva. Even though he underscores his intention to “gain his freedom step by step”, each individual vote of his will be scrutinised by Thomas Aeschi, the Swiss People’s Party group leader in the House of Representatives.
Being a representative of a tiny political party, combined with the two-chamber system, which obliges politicians to convince the members of the Senate behind the scenes to have a chance of passing a law, makes things even more complicated. Still, Sormanni does not intend to sit on his hands. “The population of Geneva has trusted me, my intention is not to play a walk-on part in Bern,” he says.
After a first parliamentary session spent observing and learning, Sormanni will prioritise health insurance and pensions – subjects which are dear to him – in his interventions in the coming months. Two of his declared aims are to oblige health insurance funds to be financially more transparent, and to change the basic pension regulations to prevent people who have paid into the scheme through their entire professional life ending up with significantly diminished pension payments after they retire.
Transparency crusade
His first parliamentary intervention, however, will be at question time for the government in the spring session which starts on February 26. He will ask the Health Minister, Elisabeth Baume-Schneider, what price Switzerland paid for the 61 million doses of Covid vaccines bought during the pandemic. Up until now the authorities have refused to make this information public, even after the Federal Commissioner’s request for transparency.
Sormanni stresses: “I’m not anti-vaccine, but this lack of transparency feeds citizens’ distrust of the authorities and the idea that ‘they are all rotten’”. Depending on how the minister replies, the newly elected parliamentarian will determine which political or legal possibilities are available in order to obtain the information requested.
At an age when many of his contemporaries are going on cruises on the Danube or babysitting their grandchildren, Sormanni is determined to give the government a hard time. “Don’t expect me to stop asking annoying questions” he warns.
Edited by Pauline Turuban/ac. Adapted from French by J. Waardenburg.
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