Interviews

SWISS NEUTRALITY, INSTRUMENT FOR PEACE  

It is always most refreshing to listen to an envoy who knows his onions expatiating  enthusiastically on his country's and its people's relations with his host country and its people, its foreign policy and relations with the international community at large, and about its social, cultural, political and scientific and technological achievements.

That's how Ambassador Georg Zubler scores as a consummate salesman for his country which has earned the respect of every other country in the world.  Switzerland  is, of course, also known, besides neutrality, for its clock-work efficiency (no pun intended) in every field of human endeavour.  

But here is a country that, because of the nature of its complex makeup, is also often rather seriously misunderstood.  What seems to persist in the minds of many are cuckoo clocks, Swiss che  ese, Swiss chocolates and, to some extent, Swiss neutrality - a concept that is only partially understood.

A country that is credited with pioneering the parliamentary system, and precision engineering almost 400 years before the industrial revolution and still produces the world's best chronometers; the county that produced Paracelsus and Nietzsche, brought up and gave Albert Einstein his scientific education, obviously deserves everyone else's respect.  

Swiss democracy has, of course, been taken to new heights, where popular participation in governance is not limited to the periodic election of representatives, but where citizens enthusiastically and actively vote in a referendum on each and every major policy issue.   

Swiss citizens' rejection of previous suggestions for joining the United Nations was the reason for its staying out of the organisation until 2002, even though it has been playing host to most specialised agencies of the UN. And even though it's surrounded by countries of the European Union and participates in a number of its protocols, Switzerland still remains outside the EU. 

Switzerland is the only country in the world with four official languages - German, French, Italian and Romansch - and where a new President is installed each year; where the state has kept up a long tradition of giving generous subsidies to newspapers, so that citizens would have access to the widest variety of information and political and other viewpoints. No wonder this country has the highest ratio of newspapers to the general population.  

A country with very few natural resources, Switzerland is one of the world's richest countries, with per capita income of over US$48,000 - among the highest in the world.  Switzerland leads the world in services, banking being the most visible. But besides the production of precision instruments, such as watches and measuring instruments, Switzerland is also a world leader in the design and production of power turbines, medical instruments, specialty chemicals, pharmaceuticals and communication satellites, together with the electronics that go into them.  

But perhaps what are more commonly known about Switzerland, even if poorly understood, are its long-standing policy of neutrality and its banking system.  As Ambassador Zubler explains, neutrality is not a means for avoiding contact with others, but a positive instrument for guaranteeing internal peace and security.

That has, of course, worked very work for Switzerland. Otherwise there would be no reason for this country, strategically located at the crossroads of Western Europe, to have persisted in it, officially since 1815 and unofficially for 300 years before that. Regarding the widely held view that Swiss banks were, in large part, to blame  for poor-country dictators' propensity for stashing stolen funds in secret numbered accounts, Ambassador Zubler says that Switzerland has been doing everything to right such wrongs. Switzerland, he says, has been cooperating with governments that have lodged complaints and points out that so far only Switzerland has returned any such funds.

Ghana and Switzerland established formal diplomatic relations in 1960. Mr Zubler prefers to go beyond that and sees 1828, when Swiss missionaries arrived to "spread the gospel" on the Gold Coast, as the beginning of relations between the two countries.  Every Ghanaian agrees about the indelible imprint that the work of these missionaries has left on Ghana's education as well as its economy and the country's life in general. 

Trade relations, established by the missionaries with the founding, in 1850, of the Basel Mission Trading Company (to become the Union Trading Company in 1921), have expanded to embrace other economic activities, such as foreign direct investment in Ghana. Officially the two countries have had more than four decades of political diplomatic relations and cooperation in the area of development. 

Today there is quite a large Swiss presence in Ghana, particularly in business, with 52 Swiss companies, among them Barry Callebaut (chocolates), First Catering (airport catering and fruit processing, Panalpina (transport and logistics), Cotecna Inspection, SGS, and Nestle, the world's largest food manufacturer. 

Ambassador Zubler is full of praise for his host country and its efforts at economic development. Switzerland, he says, did not have to write off any debts, because Ghana had no outstanding debt with Switzerland, which was, nevertheless, quite happy that Ghana managed to reach the HIPC completion point in record time.  He expresses the hope that Ghana would use her HIPC resources sustainably and avoid entering into another debt cycles.        

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