BERN - Five days after Guy Parmelin announced his departure from the Federal Council, the succession race has its first definitive answer, and it is a no. Magdalena Martullo-Blocher, the SVP national councillor and industrialist whose name topped most early lists, has ruled herself out of the running.
Her withdrawal thins the field of heavyweight candidates and shifts attention to the names that remain. SVP national councillor Céline Amaudruz of Geneva and St. Gallen state councillor Esther Friedli are among those most often mentioned in the party's internal soundings, alongside Zurich government councillor Natalie Rickli, as the early canvassing showed. The party's cantonal sections can submit candidates until 23 October, the SVP settles its ticket on 20 November, and the United Federal Assembly elects on 9 December.
A seat the SVP expects to keep
The seat is the SVP's to lose under the informal arithmetic that distributes the seven Federal Council seats among the largest parties, and no other party has signalled a serious claim. The real contest is therefore inside the SVP: between its French-speaking and German-speaking wings, between parliamentarians and cantonal executives, and between those who want a confrontational course in Bern and those who argue the party governs better than it campaigns.
Martullo-Blocher's refusal removes the candidate who most clearly combined both. It also removes, for now, the prospect of a second woman on the council being championed by its most powerful advocate inside the party, though Amaudruz, Friedli and Rickli would each keep that possibility alive.
The calendar from here
Parmelin, the 66-year-old winegrower from Bursins who holds the rotating presidency this year, leaves office on 31 December after eleven years. Whoever the SVP nominates on 20 November will face a parliament that traditionally respects the ticket of the party concerned, and a December election that will set the government's balance for the final year before the 2027 general election.