Lun, 11 de Mar de 2024
Glarus gears up for a pivotal second-round election on March 24, with centrist Daniela Bösch-Widmer and SVP’s Thomas Tschudi vying for a key seat in a reshaped cantonal government landscape.
On March 24, the voters of Glarus will elect a successor to Benjamin Mühlemann (FDP) in a second round of voting. There will be an exciting duel for the current FDP seat between: Centrist Daniela Bösch-Widmer and SVP candidate Thomas Tschudi.
The liberal candidate has withdrawn. Roger Schneider (FDP), who was supposed to defend Mühlemann’s seat, however he received less than half as many votes as his rivals in the first round of voting on March 3.
Daniela Bösch-Widmer, a member of the Centre Party, was in the lead with 4,587 votes, closely followed by SVP councillor Thomas Tschudi with 4,268. As no one achieved an absolute majority, there will be a second ballot.
Schneider pulled out after the election defeat. As a result, the FDP lost one of the two seats it had held in the five-member government since 2006.
The decisive question in the second round of voting is who can win over more liberal voters? Although the FDP leadership has not issued an election recommendation, it is advertising the SVP candidate on its homepage in a veiled manner.
The SVP, the Center Party and the SP each currently hold one seat on the executive, while the FDP holds two. Both Tschudi and Bösch-Widmer would win a second seat for their party if they were to win. Should the centrist candidate win the race, this would result in a center-left majority.
However, FDP voters in Glarus are traditionally closer to the SVP than to the center. Tschudi can therefore hope for the bigger slice of the FDP cake.
Bösch-Widmer, on the other hand, can count on the vast majority of votes to the left of center. She is officially supported by the Greens, but not by the SP.
The 46-year-old special education teacher has been a politician in the district council, the parliament, since 2009 and is its vice president. In the election campaign, she says she is relying on her honest and open manner. If she wins the election, she would be the second woman in government alongside Marianne Lienhard (SVP).
The 45-year-old business economist Tschudi has been a member of the cantonal council since 2012 and chairs the Audit Committee. Tschudi, who effectively acts as party president, only recently raised his profile in the Glarus region. In the national elections in October, the SVP under his leadership was the only party to contest both chambers and won the only seat in the Glarus National Council.
Landammann Benjamin Mühlemann was elected to the Council of States on October 22, 2023. For this reason, he will step down as a member of the cantonal government at the Landsgemeinde in May.
©Keystone/SDA
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