Who is this man and why is he important?

Do you know who this global leader is? No? Correct answer. Why? Because you're not meant to.  He doesn't sit in a black leather swivel chair stroking his white blue-eyed Turkish angora moggy, sending failed operatives to a watery death in a pool of man-eating sharks. He isn't Mr Big, the sinister puppet-master pulling the levers of global finance, nor is he the new Dick Cheney, Grand Vizier of the US war machine, poised to unleash 'shock and awe' on hundreds of thousands of unsuspecting victims in a middle east fireball.
His name is Ueli Maurer. And he's the Boss of Switzerland and maybe the future of power in the world. More accurately, he's the President of The Swiss Confederation for 2013. And the beauty of their system is that he's not the boss. Switzerland has no centre,
it’s regional canton and city governments are known for their direct democracy. Get this. The top people actually believe they can't adequately fulfill the needs of the  people at  local level. They don't just say it, they mean it. This means that local governments have real power. The country is so decentralized that only 20% of the taxes are collected by central government and the other 80% goes to each of the 26 regional cantons. Switzerland is also, spookily, the wealthiest country per capita, in the world. On the power front, the politicians reckon they should spend their time sorting out domestic problems, and step back from international grandstanding and military interventions. Sounds good to me, Dave. I'm always impressed by a political system that knows its limits. The Swiss Army makes a bloody good penknife. And that's as far as it goes. Taxi !