Cassis joined Twitter while running for the House of Representatives in 2011.
(Keystone)
Ignazio Cassis, Switzerland’s newly elected foreign affairs minister, has removed over 90% of his Twitter posts. He’ll polish his Facebook profile next, say government authorities.
The centre-right Radical Party member joined Twitter in March 2011. Some of the deleted tweets include comments deemed not suitable for his role as Switzerland’s foreign affairs minister.
For example, in June 2016, after Britain’s vote to leave the EU, the then-parliamentarian wrote: “Brexit, Grexit, Quitaly oder Endenemark? AdiEU everybody!” The website Politwoopsexternal link archives the deleted tweets of politicians.
As the foreign affairs ministry told the Tages-Anzeiger, Cassis will use his existing social media accounts for official department business. Most of his pre-election posts are not relevant for his current function, it said.
Cassis is the first member of the seven-person government from the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino since 1999. He replaced Didier Burkhalter, who handed in his notice in June for personal reasons.
All rights reserved. The content of the website by swissinfo.ch is copyrighted. It is intended for private use only. Any other use of the website content beyond the use stipulated above, particularly the distribution, modification, transmission, storage and copying requires prior written consent of swissinfo.ch. Should you be interested in any such use of the website content, please contact us via contact@swissinfo.ch.
As regards the use for private purposes, it is only permitted to use a hyperlink to specific content, and to place it on your own website or a website of third parties. The swissinfo.ch website content may only be embedded in an ad-free environment without any modifications. Specifically applying to all software, folders, data and their content provided for download by the swissinfo.ch website, a basic, non-exclusive and non-transferable license is granted that is restricted to the one-time downloading and saving of said data on private devices. All other rights remain the property of swissinfo.ch. In particular, any sale or commercial use of these data is prohibited.