Death of former member of cantonal government announced

The death has been announced of Hans-Beat Uttinger, a former member of the Zug cantonal government, aged 68.
 
Uttinger (second photograph), a member of the SVP party, became the cantonal director of planning following the killing of his predecessor, Jean-Paul Flachsman, one of the 14 members of the cantonal parliament who were shot dead while in session in September 2001. Previously, Uttinger had been a member of the greater city council of Zug for five years.
 
According to an article about him in the Neue Zuger Zeitung, he always meticulously prepared everything he had to deliver in parliament. Furthermore, while he was an entrepreneur, he modestly but proudly gave his profession as a miller, as he once was.
 
Speaking of his former colleague on the cantonal government, Joachim Eder, who now sits in the Council of States in Bern, said he was very sad to learn of his untimely death. "I had a very good relationship with the former director of planning. We both became members at the same time following the Zug Massacre and we worked closely together on the construction of the new Cantonal Hospital in Baar. I have fond memories of the functions we attended together and shall remember him as a sensitive man with a great sense of humour. What we all appreciated in parliamentary sessions, too, was how he kept his pronouncements brief and to the point."
 
Matthias Michel, who heads the Cantonal Department of Economic Development, also has fond memories of Uttinger, with whom he worked during the latter's last three years in government. "In some ways he was a man of a different era, a time before us. Age-wise, he could have been my father," he said, as he added how his former colleague was a member of that generation which had grown up before the age of computers and mobile phones. "So he was never one to concern himself with mobile media and hectic e-mailing," he said. "I shall remember him for the good relationship we had while in government together and for the enjoyable times we had over meals on more informal occasions."