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Tzipi Livni Rolls the Dice on Elections
The "Mrs. Clean" of Israeli politics says she'd rather face the voters than submit to political blackmail.
New elections would likely be held in February or March.
Nicknamed “Mrs. Clean,” Livni is spinning her decision to call for elections as a way to avoid sullying herself and the country by pandering to Shas — a party considered something of the enfante terrible of Israeli politics. Led by their spiritual leader, Ovadia Yosef, a frail 88-year-old rabbi, along with a collection of politicians, they are notorious for conditioning their entrance into ruling coalitions with large packages of financial goodies.
Since news that elections were imminent broke over the weekend, the Israeli media has been full of commentators excoriating Shas, along with other political parties, for baring their teeth and making threats as part of the now-familiar dance of negotiating their way into power.
Writing in the Hebrew daily Maariv, Ben Caspit concluded, “Only we are left, stuck in a depressing leadership crisis, with a system of government that is impossible, a rotten, stinking dish of scrambled eggs that includes greed, narrow interests, corruption, and intrigues.”
“All of this creates an unmanageable country, the only one in the world that will be devoting the next several months to a bizarre elections campaign instead of to a united and determined national effort for economic survival. And that is even before we have begun to talk about the security challenges,” he wrote.
In an Israel especially weary of political corruption and dirty deals in the wake of the many investigations of top government figures, of whom Olmert is only one example, Livni’s advantage is the sense of propriety she exudes.
It’s an asset she knows she has to highlight in her bid to remind people she represents a different way of doing politics.
One way in which Livni could endear herself to an Israeli public is to talk about election reform during the campaign. Israelis are disillusioned by a political system in which the ruling party never wins a majority and is therefore dependent on smaller parties to cobble together a ruling coalition. The coalitions are usually fragile — nobody can really remember the last time a government served its full term.
“The Israeli system is a form of glorified and officialized blackmail and bribery. It’s bribery to get parties into a coalition, and blackmail for staying inside the coalition,” said Dahlia Scheindlin, a political pollster and analyst.
Reform is a subject that could perk up the ears of voters tired of seeing their leaders try to build coalitions first and to work to preserve them later, taking time away from dealing with national issues of existential importance. Among those is the peace process with the Palestinians. The elections will likely put efforts on that front on hold.
Needless to say, President Bush’s hope to have a Mideast peace deal in hand before he leaves office this January — which was always a long shot — has become more of an impossible dream than ever.
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Dina Kraft is a Tel Aviv-based journalist.
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8 Comments
1. Ken Besig:Ms. Livni failed to form a governing coalition because she is inexperienced at governing, immature and lacking in any principles, and finally a total incompetent at politics. This is no big surprise since she has been an abysmal failure as Foreign Minister for Israel (while at the same time being the best thing that every happened to Hizballah and Hamas), and has absolutely nothing whatsoever to her credit as a Knesset member.
Oct 27, 2008 - 4:19 am 2. ash:Ms. Livni has only managed to get ahead in Israeli politics because she comes from a politically well connected Israel family, and is as we call them in Israel, a princess, just like Ehud Olmert, Dan Meridor, Tsachi HaNegbi, and even Benyamin Netanyahu come from royal Israeli families and are known here as princes.
However, whereas Netanyahu and HaNegbi have actually gotten into to the Israeli political trenches so to speak, and proven their abilities, Ms. Livni and Mr. Olmert have always been content to let others do the tough and dirty political work while they rode in on their coattails.
Ms. Livni as well as Ehud Olmert rode into power on Ariel Sharon’s coattails, and simply slipped into place after Sharon had his stroke.
Almost anyone else, myself included, could have formed a stable Israeli governing coalition last week. The fact that Livni could not attests to her inexperience, he lack of practical political ability, and her total inabiity to inspire confidence in anyone. After all, the only thing that stood between two years of a Livni administration and new elections was a few million shekels, and a committment to Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem. These are hardly impossible barriers, except for the now “clean” Tzipi, who by the way managed to sit untroubled in an Olmert government for over two years while the Prime Minister himself was under Police investigation for any number of crimes and paid off every political blackmail that came his way.
If u write that livni and her fraud leftist party are centrists anouther ten times u might actually beleive it.As a member of the livni hopeless pr team your not fooling anyone with the mrs clean act your better off joining reuters.
Oct 27, 2008 - 8:52 am 3. Frank:This article makes me puke, so much BS dont know where to begin.
Enjoy the livni spin but bibi will win easy.
Didn’t Livni refuse to promise to keep Jerusalem undivided?
Netanyahu all the way
Oct 27, 2008 - 11:11 am 4. An informed Israeli:Why bother to publish such an uninformative chunk of writing? It reads like a washed leftist trivia entry – Livni is called this, Shas is known as that …
What about some opinion? Or maybe you have none?
E.g., you could have elaborated more on pollsters’ grave errors predicting a landslide victory for Livni in a race with Mofaz, and enlightened your readers about alleged frauds in those elections (burned ballots, Druzi political machines, etc.).
Ms. Livni miserably failed at forming a government based on majority fraction in Knesset, where most MKs prayed for her to succeed – knowing full well that they will see the Melia after the next election on TV only. What makes anyone think she is capable to run the country?! What experience she has? Her genealogy?
Well, taking into account that Geveret Kraft fails even to mention that her Alma-mater on honesty and “balanced” “investigative” journalism is AP (http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/special/staff.html)- we need not to be surprised.
Who pays for this puff-piece, anyway? Adler et Khomsky from “Forum – Ha-Hava”?
Oct 27, 2008 - 1:51 pm 5. Anonymous:I stil cannot understand why did it take so long for Shas to get out and, first of all what tf kept Avigdor Liberman (”Liebermann”) in the coalition he hates. O.K., it’s “above my paygrade”. But I still want Gilad to get home ALIVE.
And: Israel and Georgia (that Georgia, the victim of the COMMUNIST IMPERIALISM) want McCain/ourSarah to win. Sweet.
Oct 27, 2008 - 5:56 pm 6. Ex-fetus:The only peace possible between Muslims and Jews is the peace of the grave. The Jews delude themselves about that, just as they deluded themselves about Hitler’s intentions. The Muslims understand that they have to exterminate the Jews, only they lack the means to do so.Once those means are acquired, there will be peace in the Holy Land.
A combination of Livni and Obama means the end of Israel.
Oct 27, 2008 - 9:43 pm 7. Ed Mahmoud:I hope Netanyahu wins, as an American. I don’t think Bush has the political capital now to risk an instant invocation of the War Powers Act if he moves to stop the Iranian Manhattan Project, and the likely next President is clearly not going to offend his many fans in the Islamic world.
If Israel can’t stop Iran, probably nobody will. The first target of an Iran with a nuclear deterrent will be Israel, but Iran’s foreign legion, Hezb’Allah, is established in the Americas, and a destroyed US city might not be far behind.
Oct 28, 2008 - 11:00 am 8. divas:here’s a link on Ms Livni
Oct 28, 2008 - 11:18 pmhttp://drdivas.wordpress.com/2008/10/27/israel-politics-livni-takes-a-principled-stand/