Achille Casanova, Swiss politician, Died at 74

  Politician

Achille Casanova was born on October 2, 1941, in Zurich, and died on July 17, 2016.
He was a Swiss journalist and politician.
Casanova held the office of Vice-Chancellor of Switzerland between 1981 and 2005, and during this time became the first official spokesman for the Swiss Federal Council when that role was created on 1 September 2000.
Casonova attended school in Lugano, before studying political science at the universities of Bern and Fribourg.
Achille started working as a journalist for the national press agency of Switzerland, before joining the Swiss Italian Television RSI in 1966.[4]
Over the period of his career, Casanova worked with 26 different Federal Councillors (out of 108 ever elected by the time of his resignation), participated in over 1180 Federal Council sessions, and officiated under three different Chancellors.
As a candidate for the office twice himself, the Swiss Federal Assembly elected other candidates every time.
He was fluent in German, French, Italian and English, his resignation sparked a minor row over language representation within the Swiss Federal government, when his successor, Oswald Sigg, was named over several candidates from Swiss-French and Swiss-Italian regions.
Which was compounded by the fact that his office (the second Vice-chancellor, in charge of the Information & Communication sector) had initially been created in 1895 on an ad-hoc basis, to add a senior representative of the French and Italian speaking regions when both the Chancellor and the other Vice-chancellors came from German-speaking cantons.
Following his retirement from office in 2005, he joined the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG as its Ombudsman.
During January 2006, Casanova was appointed Chairman of the International Balzan Prize Foundation.
He was married and a father and had two grown children.
Achille Casanova passed away at 74 years old.