Israeli elections - why there isn't a winner - February 13, 2009

Ann writes:


On Tuesday of this week Israel went to the polls to choose a new Prime Minister and to elect people to serve in the Knesset, which is our congress. We still don't know who the new prime minister will be, and we probably won't for at least a month, if not more. This is a short explanation of how our political system "works", and why there isn't a "winner" yet.

First of all, to show how disgusted most of the country is about our lack of leadership, this election had the second-lowest voter turnout in history - about 60%. Israel usually has about 85% turnout. I know this is high in comparison to the average US voter turnout, but for us it is very low.

The Israeli political system was loosely based on the British system. We have an elected parliament (the Knesset) comprised of one house, not two like in England or the US. The Knesset is comprised of 120 members. The number represents the 12 tribes, and the age that Moses was when he went to heaven. In Hebrew, the traditional birthday greeting is "until 120", meaning a blessing of a long and healthy life. We have a multi-party system. This election, for example, had about 35 parties running. Each party makes up a list of its candidates. Your place on the list is determined by your power within the party. The closer you are to the top, the better chance you have of being elected. And since the candidates can come from anywhere in the country, they aren't responsible or answerable to any specific constituency - i.e., they can do what they want with no checks. When all the ballots are counted, in order to receive one of the 120 places (mandates) in the Knesset, you must have received at least 1.2% of the total number of votes cast. If you don't make that number, you aren't elected. So each party gets one mandate for each 1.2% of the total votes it got. The mandates are given to the candidates starting at the top of the list and going down. So lets say that one of the major parties has a list of 60 people and they get 40 mandates, the last 10 people on the list are not elected. Ideally the winning party would receive a majority of 61 mandates. This has never happened.

Because we have so many parties running, no one has ever gotten close to getting the 61 mandate majority needed to become prime minister. This makes it necessary to sell your soul (and your own party people lower on the list) in order to create a coalition by buying the mandates of other parties. The price: government ministeries / cabinet positions / money. This also means that the smaller parties have disproportionate power in the negotiations. You may have only won 10 mandates, but those votes could be the difference between another party being in the government or sitting in the opposition.

What happened in this election is that there were 3 people running for Prime Minister. They don't actually run on a separate ticket, but are the first names on their own party lists. Two of the three (Ehud Barak and Bibi Netanyahu) have been PM before. The third, Zipi Livni, used to be in Bibi's party but joined the "turncoat" party Kadima, which was formed by Ariel Sharon and consists of members from both the main parties who didn't get what they wanted in their own parties. Kadima is a party with no specific direction or government policy, and which is made up of people who are political enemies. Their only common goal is to stay in power. Barak is our defense minister in the same coalition government where Livni is the Foreign minister.

Livni's party -Kadima (center/left) won 28 seats, so her party will be the largest party in the knesset. But since she needs 61 seats to be PM, she won't necessarily be the PM. Bibi's party - the Likud (right)- won 27 seats. Barak - Labor - only got 13, the lowest in his partiy's history. (This is the party led by Ben Gurion, Golda Meir, Shimon Peres, Itzhak Rabin, etc.) The third largest party - Israel Beteinu (very right wing and a breakoff of the Likud) - got 15. And nearly all the other parties who got seats, including the religious parties, are right wing, which means they are traditionally more interested in a coalition with the right. The rightwing parties make up 65 seats.

While the PM is elected, the president is chosen by a vote of the Knesset. The PM leads the country (like the US president), but the president has a more ceremonial role (like the British monarch). Our current president is Shimon Peres, who used to be a PM when in the Labor party. He has one week from the date of the election to meet with the heads of all the parties. He then must decide who has the best chance to form a coalition. That person then has 45 days (extendable) to form a coalition. In this case, Bibi has a better chance than Zipi to form a coalition, so while she has the biggest party she doesn't have the most possible coalition partners. Of course, loyalty to party ideals is usually dependent upon what price the coalition is willing to pay.

This close vote pretty well reflects the feelings of the country. In Jerusalem and all the border areas, north and south, right-wing parties got a 3 to 1 (and some places even 5 to 1) win. The more left parties were strong only in the Tel Aviv area, and Haifa. I find it interesting that all three of the Druze towns on the Golan Heights voted almost unanimously for Israel Betenu, which is extremely right wing. I think it is because they are very concerned about being returned to Syria in the event of a left-wing treaty with Syria.

Both of the main parties were hopeful that the counting of the absentee ballots yesterday (soldiers, overseas diplomats, etc. and prisoners) would change things. It didn't. What was news-worthy was that nearly all of the soldiers in the field cast a blank vote and had hand-written the name of Gilad Shalit, our soldier who was kidnapped from Israeli territory nearly 3 years ago. In other words, no faith in the leadership.

So next Thursday President Peres will make his choice, and the bargaining will get ever more fierce. In the meantime Prime Minister Olmert, who resigned months ago and is in the middle of a huge criminal corruption case, will continue to "lead" us for at least another couple of months.

Ann