 |
| Pierre Maudet and Nefail Maliqi |
Pierre Maudet, a former chief of police and justice and now a candidate for minister (Conseil d’État), is the youngest politician in the canon of Geneva, and in Switzerland as well. He started his political career at the age of 18, and at the age of 22, he officially joined the cantonal police as a senior official. In the first round of elections for the Council of State, Pierre Maudet emerged victorious with a smile, Swiss media in Albanian reports.
Pierre Maudet's Liberty and Social Justice Party (LJS) surprised everyone by winning ten deputies who were "revived" in politics, as he calls himself. He is coming back stronger, having risen and found a movement in six months. By reaching sixth place in the first round of the Council of State race, Pierre Maudet has taken a significant step in his bet, which, deservedly, attracted 31.3% of the voters.
Maudet was quite pleased with the results of the first round, securing ten deputies by attracting over 30% of the voters. "With my party named 'Liberty and Social Justice,' which is a very large and broad list," he said to the Swiss newspaper Le Canton27.ch.
The Albanian community is integrated very well into Swiss society, says Swiss liberal politician Pierre Maudet in an interview. "I think the Albanian-speaking community has been well integrated into Geneva since the early '90s, during a period when we had a fairly homogeneous perception. At that time, we had the creation of the Albanian University, which was an important integration vector. Then, little by little, this integration happened in reality. When I was the political head of the police, I met young Albanians from Kosovo for the first time, and the first Albanian policemen who came to our country. Thus, associations related to integration gradually lost their importance, and during a second phase, when I was the head of integration, I sought to support and strengthen relationships with the culture of origin," he said.
Maudet, who has also been mayor of Geneva, stresses that many representatives of this community also contribute to the political life of their country. "There are more involved in investing in Geneva's society, especially in the political world. There are people who have been elected to parliament, to cantonal parliaments, or to municipal parliaments. For this reason, the difference in origin is becoming less and less important... The Albanian-speaking community is well integrated, so it is no longer necessary to perceive it as a separate group," Maudet said in this interview.