Yeah, its quite annoying to learn, that the head of state in Switzerland is actually just a lowly bureaucrat who drew the short straw today and now has to explain politics which he does not quite understand himself....
"A lowly bureaucrat" is a bit demeaning. Foreign policy
is handled by the president. Trouble is, that (and being chairman at the council meetings) are about the only "priviledges" that come with the title. They are usually competent at what they do. They have to be, because their not very grateful job is to somehow negotiate a treaty with the EU that they actually feel has a chance to be accepted by the popular vote, and it might be quite contrary to what
they might actually want personally.
"Oh yes, we want to sign this treaty, but it rained yesterday on election day and now the treaty for common meat designation standards has to ensure that the Raetian regional language is taught as secondary language in EU schools...and don't ask me about the ponys, please..."
That one cracked me up quite a bit, though. It's kinda true, but then I think the swiss government would be happy to have such direct input. If a treaty doesn't pass the vote, all they usually have is a "thanks but no thanks", and they have to engage the data analysis machine to get some idea about
which part of the treaty they actually need to change to what in order for it to pass.
"Somehow, we want the right to build five aircraft carriers under the Washington Naval treaty...."
I doubt the Swiss population would approve that. Our airforce is pretty outdated and underequiped right now, and I have a ballot on my desk as I type that begs me to allow the military to spend 6 billion on new fighter jets, and it's not all too sure it's going to pass...
The swiss people also didn't allow the government to acquire nuclear warheads back during the cold war... Now
that was a good decision by the previous generation of voters. I don't want to think about what expenses and troubles we'd have with those by now...
?