Only one woman to stand for election to cantonal government so far

Despite calls for a woman for to be nominated as a candidate for a seat in the cantonal government, the FDP party has opted to nominate two male candidates to stand for election this autumn, ruling out the possibility of a woman standing as a third candidate.

In explaining this situation, Patrick Mollet, the deputy leader of the FDP party of the canton of Zug, said that fielding two candidates, rather than three, was the better option in assuring the party kept its two current seats in the government. Not surprisingly, the matter of the possibility of putting forward a woman candidate came from the women’s section of the party, especially when it became known last month that the only current woman member of the cantonal government, Manuela Weichelt-Picard of the Alternative Green Party (ALG), announced she was not to seek re-election. Mollet mentioned how subsequent discussion on this matter had showed what a strong call there was for more women in politics.

The deputy leader went on to explain that it would only have made sense to field three candidates if all three had a chance of winning a seat. “What we want to avoid is fielding three candidates and only winning one seat,” said Mollet. “In a first-past-the-post system, the other two remaining candidates would just be out.”

The leader of the women’s section of the FDP party, Birgitt Siegrist, conceded that this decision, in which she had had a role, had been the right one, even if she regretted it in part. She felt, too, that many other women members of the party would understand. “Many others still (wrongly) associate the elections for seats to the cantonal government with elections based on proportional representation with lists, but this is no longer the case. It is all very different with the first-past-the-post system. We have to ensure we are pursuing the right tactics,” she insisted.

This all means that, so far, there is only one woman standing for election to the cantonal government, namely Sylvia Thalmann of the CVP party. It is thought unlikely the ALG party will nominate a woman to replace Weichelt-Picard and the SVP party is fielding its two current cantonal government members, leaving only the SP party with the possibility of opting for another woman candidate.