The Friends of the Constitution have grown in a short time to an association with 26,000 members, a great success. Since the founding statutes of July 2020 were not designed for such a large association, the board had amended statutes sent out for a postal vote in September 2021. However, around 40 objections were received because members wanted more say.
Then, from October to the end of 2021, a working group of 20 FdV members under the leadership of Dr. Andreas Röthlisberger drew up grassroots democratic statutes, the most important difference being the annual election of the board.
Furthermore, the organs of the General Assembly, the Executive Board, the Auditors, the Executive Office and the Advisory Board were clearly described and a new mediation office for internal conflict resolution was created
The weight of the national board is to be reduced, while the influence of the members in the regions is to be strengthened.
In addition to the well-known regional groups, which will have more say, supra-regional working and thematic groups are being considered in order to promote networking among members, to make better use of the existing potential and to enable direct exchange and trade among members.
For this purpose, it is useful if members who want to actively participate can contact each other. The targeted release of contact details on the intranet should promote grassroots democracy and make it easier to start working and thematic groups.
This restructuring would probably also be possible at FdV and desired by some of the members. However, the imponderables on the way to changing FdV in the direction desired by the working group on statutes seem so great that founding a new association with the new statutes minimises the risks in terms of time. People can easily be members of several associations and thus support different organisational structures.
Since each form of organisation has both advantages and disadvantages, there is no right or wrong but only different ways.
The Constitutional Alliance pursues the same goals in its charter and mission statement as FdV and works together with other groupings and associations throughout Switzerland to achieve the purpose set out in Article 2 of the statutes.
The Constitutional Alliance forms the grassroots-democratically organised alternative to the Friends of the Constitution.