Actually, it’s less than two hours until Ehud Olmert ends one of the most disgraceful leaderships of the modern State of Israel. I have no real hopes that Tzipi Livni will be much different, but she’s going to have to work harder to keep that government coalition going, and with any luck, Bibi Netanyahu and Ehud Barak discussed ending the coalition and forcing new elections when they met the other day. It still won’t happen overnight. The earliest we will see new elections is three months from now:
The Knesset member tasked with the mission will be given 28 days, with a possible extension of 14 days. If this person fails, the president is authorized to order a different MK to form a coalition within an additional 28 days. Should the second MK fail to do so, the general elections will be moved up and will be held within 90 days.
That would be a good thing. Tzipi Livni will have been elected by fewer than 35,000 voters. Can you imagine a U.S. president being selected by less than half of one percent of the nation’s eligible voters? This is a government that should absolutely call new elections. She won with 16,936 votes. There are over five million eligible voters in Israel. Talk about selected, not elected. If the Israeli public stands for this—well, I’m going to stop here before I start hurting the feelings of my Israeli friends.
I am at a loss to come up with one success story that can be attributed to Olmert.
I am at a loss as to what we can do about this.
Civil disobedience.
If Israelis staged a large protest in Jerusalem, demanding new elections, and hundreds of thousands of people showed—what do you think would happen?
Embarrass the plutocrats. Force an election. Grassroots works.
Meryl, I think we’d see a lot of police beatings of individual demonstrators, just as we saw during the forced expulsion from Gaza. Police officers and soldiers will usually do whatever their commanders order them to do.
Unfortunately “work harder to keep that government coalition going” = “shoveling shekels to Shas.”
Perhaps I don’t understand, but what is the relevance of how many votes she won by? In a democratic vote, someone with only one more vote than their opponent wins, I don’t think a parlimentary system would be any difference? Maybe I don’t get what you’re saying, but are you saying that if a person doesn’t win by a certain percentage, that it’s somehow not “legitimate?”
Robert
Robert, Tzipi Livni is the second Prime Minister of Israel not to be elected, but to be running the nation, since Ariel Sharon fell into a coma.
Do I really have to explain why she should call for new elections?
I thought that pointing out that less than 17,000 people voted for her might have been a hint.
She was elected as party leader, and therefore PM, by the Kadima party activists. The actual margin IIRC was less than 400 votes between Livni and Mofaz. This is one of the weaknesses of a parliamentary system (presidential systems have other weaknesses). Basically Israel has been under a caretaker government since Sharon’s stroke. As Meryl says it should be time for new elections, especially if the government is going to do anything significant about new peace deals (Lord help us about THAT).
The problem is, of course, that even new elections probably will just bring in another coalition government, probably dependent on Shas again to find the MKs sufficient to form a government by a narrow margin of a few members. Then it will be vulnerable to threats by even small, splinter parties to pull out of the government unless they are stroked. Can you say “Labors of Sisyphus” boys and girls? I knew you could.
Don’t hold your breath for new elections.
Most MPs – including those in Kadima – know that they are likely to lose their seats in the next election, and so they are holding on as long as they can.
And please don’t swallow the Israeli media’s attempts to puff up Kadima. Their chronic Bibi-itis is flaring up, and they are desperate to promote someone – anyone! – as promising leadership material.
Don’t buy it. Kadima is likely to shrink drastically in the next election, and probably disappear altogether after that. It never was anything more than a raft of backbiting rats who abandoned ship. Now the raft is sinking.
Bibi and the Likud – cleansed of these political weasels – will come back, big time.
You can safely skip the months of Livni-puffery to come.
Unfortunately, although Israel is technically a democracy, it has been subverted so long by the socialist hegemony that most Israelis have very low expectations. There is nothing like a Bill of Rights or a tradition of small, limited government.
So North American immigrants – and a small clutch of conservative Israelis – try to educate people about what they should be demanding. And the majority shrug and work their way around the system and its corruptions.
Sure, we’re a democracy. So is Italy…
I wasn’t trying to be controversial, I really didn’t understand Isreal’s Government. In other words, they hold their positions until they “call” another election? So, the voters that voted for here were only in her district?
Robert
Not district. Party. It was a Kadima primary election to fill the slot of the Prime Minister, who resigned.
Parliamentary government sucks. It guarantees the rule of the elite by the elite, with the help of the bribery of those in power. It’s far worse than the lack of term limits in the U.S. Congress.
In this case, if Livni can bribe enough Members of the Knesset, she will become Prime Minister without ever having to face a general election.
If Labor doesn’t have the balls to join Likud and bring down the government, say hello to more of the same.