Former Swiss president laments the rise of 'hate politics'

INTERVIEW | Ruth Dreifuss is a force of nature, an 80-year-old who possesses a zeal for humanitarian reform. Formerly the president of Switzerland, she served as home minister from 1993 to 2002 and instituted ground-breaking changes.

She is now traversing the world, spreading the gospel of drug policy reform and fighting for the abolition of capital punishment. Her commitment towards women’s issues, workers’ rights, environmental preservation and opening up euthanasia to debate is just as strong.

Read More: Ex-Swiss president: War on drugs failed, treating addicts as patients will work

But, as she told Malaysiakini in an interview on Friday, she is deeply concerned about the rise of right-wing hate politics all over the world.

“I think it is a big concern. I am very troubled with that because I am eager to learn from history and I can see that inequality, xenophobia and economic crisis brought war to Europe in the first half of the last century,” she said, referring in particular to the two World Wars where the second was fueled by the rise of Nazi Germany.

“Economic crisis is not here, but how long until there is a situation that we can't deal with. Nationalist xenophobia and inequality are present in our society, and these have been used by the populist groups to target migrants.

Dreifuss said that anytime ethnicity is used to marginalise people, the situation becomes concerning, a point which Malaysians might do well to take note of.

“On the other hand, I am thrilled with the youth. We have so many young people eager to interfere on political issues, on climate change, so that is encouraging.”

Working-class feels abandoned

A veteran socialist from Switzerland’s Social Democratic Party, Dreifuss said that in Europe at least, traditional working-class parties have lost touch with their base and allowed the right-wing to swoop in.

“The main problem for my party is that we enlarged the responsibility to reach new causes, but we neglected our base of the past. Feminism, the LGBT movement, the whole environment cause, but we lost touch with the situation of workers who are losing their jobs due to globalisation.

“So, socialist parties have lost their traditional connection to the workers, who now feel they are no longer defended by these parties, and this is bad because the working class is moving towards populist and nationalist parties who are growing very fast using a negative platform.”

A constant battle

Nonetheless, Dreifuss is not one to walk away from a fight. When she was pushing through reforms such as Switzerland’s pioneering treatment of drug addicts, she encountered a lot of opposition from traditionalists. But through results ranging from a reduction in crime to fewer health problems, she was able to establish that her ideas have merit.

“I had a large department (at the home ministry) going from science to social security, but I like to say the most important good feeling I had when I resigned from the government was that I helped save lives and improved lives.

“People with children with very serious illnesses were given help, science was promoted, and there was universal coverage for health expenses. I also fought for maternity leave. I could not get it, but my successor did. Just like I benefitted from the work of my predecessor.

“What is important in my job is that we learned to work together. This is the key to success, a slow success but success,” said Dreifuss, who is founder and head of the Global Commission on Drug Policy and also a commissioner on the International Commission Against the Death Penalty.

Coming from a peaceful and prosperous nation, she is keenly aware of the inequalities of opportunities and standards of living around the world.

“We have some countries that run fast on a level of development, and this happens in one part of the world. But so many other countries are not only staying where they are but perhaps going backwards. This is a result of colonialism, technological development and nowadays, neocolonialism. We are far from the goal of reducing inequality.”

The climate change factor

Dreifuss was a personal friend of Bruno Manser, the Swiss environmental activist who lived with Sarawak’s Penan tribe for many years and who disappeared in May 2000, to be declared dead five years later by a Swiss court. She feels that must be a change of policy regarding deforestation in our part of the world.

“The problem is growing. Every year there are more burning forests.

“We are producing climate change at high speed and destroying many lives that rely on our forests. Is it so important to get palm oil that we must burn our forests? You know the last time I was here in KL, I was here for four to five days and I never saw the sun. It was five years ago, there was a brown mist (haze) over the city, and the schools were closed.

“Why? Because of the burning jungles in Indonesia to make way for palm plantation. Does it make sense to poison the whole population here to have a palm plantation in a neighbouring country? It is a huge problem,” she said.

Assisted dying

Switzerland is also known for taking an unusual approach to assisted dying. If one is terminally ill and in great pain, assisted dying is permissible by Swiss law, and particularly applied to those of advanced age with little hope of recovery.

There has even been an influx of German and British citizens coming to Switzerland to voluntarily end their lives.

“There are those who are dying but because they don’t want to give trauma to their beloved family, they prefer to take poison. But poison is not legal.

“I believe if the person is near the end of life and in pain - and if they are asking for it, and the doctor prescribes it so their lives end - I would say I accept it,” explained Dreifuss.

“My country accepts this, and I would love if many countries can accept this too. We have tragic cases where people are experiencing so much suffering and want to die but cannot do so in their country in a humane way.

“What is more humane? What is natural? To prolong a life where a patient is suffering without any quality of life?”

“People are coming to die in Switzerland which I don’t favour - I prefer they come for skiing. But if treatment is no longer effective and you continue trying to cure prolong somebody’s suffering from illness and he is on the last period of his life – that’s wrong. I think you must reduce suffering and accompany people with love and help them until they die in a natural way,” said Dreifuss.