Holidaymaker becomes village chief

Holidaymaker becomes village chief

 

Heading the local council seems to have lost its appeal in the mountain village of Tujetsch. That’s why it took a headhunter to find Beat Röschlin, a former company manager who owns a holiday flat in the village. This is a lesson on the crumbling Swiss militia system, and one for the new village chief from the lowlands.

 

Text, Picture, Video: Stephanie Hess

 

“When I agreed to take on this position, I had no idea what to expect. No clue at all,” Beat Röschlin says. Clad in a grey polo shirt with his collar turned up, he sits in his wood-panelled office in the local community building in Sedrun, the main village of the spread-out commune of Tujetsch in Canton Grisons.

 

The big window behind him offers a view of a green meadow with high snow-capped mountains towering above it.

 

Unlike many other local politicians in Switzerland, the 64-year old has nothing cautious or circumspect about him. He seems strong, direct and ambitious. It is rare to find a man of this calibre in the position of a mayor. “I’m a manager. I’ll never be a politician,” he notes. It is no secret he draws on management principles to govern his community.

 

But how does a lowlander like Beat Röschlin end up moving from the service-oriented town of Zug to a mountain village in Grisons to take on the job of village chief?

 

Throwing in the towel

 

In spring 2014, his predecessor Pancrazi Berther failed to get re-elected in the first round. He was so frustrated that he did not even bother to stand in the second round and threw in the towel. There was no other contender and so, from one day to the next, Tujetsch was left without a leader.

 

Pancrazi Berther is experiencing firsthand what many citizen politicians struggle with in Switzerland. In the remaining 2,222 Swiss municipalities, holding political office

means a lot of work and headaches, but limited appreciation for your efforts. The rewards a few.

 

Under the Swiss militia system holding public office cannot be your primary source of income. The pay for mayors and local councillors is largely symbolic and often not worth the effort. The issues the politicians must deal with are complex in our globalised world. Finding candidates for the local council has become difficult, sometimes even impossible in many Swiss villages.

 

The lack of volunteers wanting to take on communal responsibilities, such as holding offices in the executive branch of the local community or in commissions, can have disastrous consequences. First and foremost, being the smallest entity in the system, the very existence of local communities can come under threat. Secondly, the Swiss local democracy system as a whole is increasingly weakened.

 

On the hunt

 

Over the past five years, institutions such as the think tanks Avenir Suisse and the Aarau Centre for Democracy (ZDA) have put their thinking caps on to craft solutions to mitigate the growing crisis.

 

They have found two approaches for how they could strengthen the militia system on a local level. They suggest better pay as well as an obligation to take over political offices. The latter solution, also known as “Amtszwang” (compulsory service), has already been introduced in some Swiss communities.

 

Flyer in the mail box

 

The idiosyncratic dwellers of Tujetsch, however, wanted to do it differently and chose another path. They hired a headhunter who started his mission by distributing flyers throughout the village, giving special attention to holiday flat owners.

 

One of these flyers ended up in Beat Röschlin’s post box. The then 60-year old from Walchwil in Canton Zug had just finished his career as a manager. His job had taken him to South Korea and the United States as well as to the top of American and Swiss media enterprises.

 

“Immediately hooked”

 

When Röschlin emptied his post box, his eyes fell upon the flyer. “I was immediately hooked.” Being a person who had never really been politically active it was rather surprising that he put in his application. He sent in his certificates, curriculum vitae and recommendation letters, just as if he were applying for a job as CEO.

 

The local community invited him for an interview, asked him endless questions and finally nominated him as candidate for the executive board of the local community. The headhunting agency had tracked down another aspirant for the position but he dropped out after finding out there was another contender. The community was disappointed as the prospects for a proper vote were shattered.

 

Dream result

 

Nevertheless, the villagers seemed to be convinced by their one and only candidate. In March 2015, Röschlin won the elections with a seemingly Soviet result of 98% of all votes.

 

Even though the workload of the Tujetsch mayor is only a part-time job on paper, in reality it demands much more time and commitment. Beat Röschlin had to move his residency to Sedrun, although his wife, who continues to work as a teacher in Wachwil, stayed in Zug.

 

Since his election, Röschlin has been travelling between his home in Canton Zug and his new workplace up in the Grisons mountains. The commute takes at least two hours, even longer in the winters.

 

Tried-and-tested

 

When he took up his new position in spring 2015, he drew upon his tried-and-tested manager mantra: the key is “understanding the business”. It didn’t take him long, however, to realise that politics is a different ball game. “Decision-making is sometimes malicious and takes far too long to be efficient. At the beginning, I had to listen, watch and accept how things are done here,” he says. The learning curve was incredibly steep.

 

The locals are more than happy with Röschlin, who quickly mutated from being a tourist to holding the post of the village chief. It’s now been three years and in 2017, he won again with 92% of the votes, a result no Swiss federal councillor has ever achieved in parliament. WAS THERE A COMPETITOR THIS TIME?

 

Oliver Dlabac of the Aarau Centre for Democracy (ZDA) is conducting research into Switzerland’s militia system. He sees several opportunities in the headhunting model of Tujetsch to promote and find young politicians on a local level.

 

“I actually think that it needs several different entities to look for managers who can take on local council mandates. The post should be attractive for everyone, and the local council should represent a good mix of people. It should consist of young people, men and women with or without managing experience as well as people from the public sector.”

 

Overlapping holiday destination

 

“Democratically speaking, there is nothing wrong with locals choosing someone from outside the community as their leader,” says Oliver Dlabac. There is also nothing wrong with him not being a true politician. “But”, the political scientist emphasises, “some seemingly non-political decisions can actually have a touch of politics.”

 

Röschlin likes making decisions with a lot of verve and has done so from the very beginning. Shortly after his debut, he together with other members of the local council decided to remove Sedrun from the tourism association it had with Disentis. “This move triggered a huge avalanche of reactions, sending loud thunders through the valley,” he remembers laughing.

 

The dust has settled since, and the region has a new and greater common vision. It wants to create a holiday destination that reaches beyond the Grisons’ boundaries. The first step is upgrading the railway which will run past the big window of the mayor’s office one day.

 

Röschlin calls the new project a “bridge that will connect us with Disentis.” He seems to have changed his tune a bit, he almost sounds like a local politician!