(Last update: March 9, 2020)
Three days after Israel's latest national election, vote count still hadn't reached 100% complete. Even today--day 6, post-election--we don't know if a fourth election will be necessary to choose a Prime Minister.
This is Israel. It's the world's only Jewish democracy. It may well be also the world's only broken democracy.
Israel's election system is broken. A broken election system--a system which fails to allow the voice of the people (their votes) to choose the nation's leader--is a problem for 'democracy'. You see, the most fundamental characteristic of a 'democracy' isn't free speech or a free press or religious freedom or the freedom of assembly--important as these freedoms are--but elections. If a nation's election system is broken, then that nation's 'democracy' is, by definition, broken.
Netanyahu's Party--Likud--hasn't won enough seats in the nation's Knesset election (in the March 2020 election) to earn Netanyahu the Prime Minister's seat. That is to say, his Likud Party didn't win the 61 seats needed to win the Prime Ministership outright.
Normally, this wouldn't be a problem because, if memory serves me, no Party in Israel's history has ever won enough seats in an election to win outright. It's the nature of Israel's democracy. Every election in Israel's history has therefore meant that the election winner needs to attract enough support from competitor Parties to finalize his securing the right to form a government. In theory, this could make sense: a leader for Israel's democracy must appeal to ideologies not his own, to rule. His leadership must be, at least in one sense, 'democratic'--shared with others.
The problem for Likud this time (since April 2019) has been an inability to secure enough support from competitor Parties to form a government. Likud has now tried to do this three times in less than a year. It's failed each time.
This suggests a new political reality for Israel: we have become a divided nation. We are fractured by political beliefs. We have been broken by political and ideological hatred.
In happier times, political and ideological divisions could be soothed enough to give the leading (in votes) politician the 61 seats he needed to rule. In fact, in the past, that's exactly the way things in Israel worked.
But no longer. Now, Israel is too broken to be soothed. At this moment, the only Party that (perhaps) appears best able to get to a total of 61 seats is Benny Gantz's Blue-and-White. But Gantz can only get his 61 seats if he does something no Party leader in modern times (post-1995) has done: rely upon help from anti-Israel Arab Knesset Members--that is, from individuals who deny Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state (here); who have praised terrorists and stabbing attacks against Jews (here); and who deny there was ever a Jewish Temple in Jerusalem (here).
In this latest election, Netanyahu's Likud won 36 seats. Gantz's Blue-and-White only 33 seats. Since 36 seats is the most Netanyahu has ever won in any election he's been in, those 36 seats should give Netanyahu the ability to form a government--because in the past, he's been able to do that with fewer seats.
But the hatred of Netanyahu's political enemies trumps the numbers. However successful he's been in this latest election, he still needs 61 seats in the Knesset to do that--and he's got commitments only for another 22 seats (on top of his own 36) for a total of 58 seats. He's 3 seats short of the needed 61 seats.
At this moment, Netanyahu can't get those 61 seats. The only way he can do that is to attract 3 Members of competitor Parties--just 3--to bolt their original Party of choice, and move over to Likud. This is legal; but will it happen?
So far, certain obvious candidates for such a move have said, no thanks. If nobody moves to Likud, Netanyahu is stuck. He cannot form a government.
Gantz , on the other hand, believes he can attract a coalition of 61 seats. He says he has the commitments. But to get to 61 seats, he'll have to break a campaign promise not to include the Arab Joint List in his decision-making.
To become Israel's next Prime Minister, Gantz doesn't just want to team up with anti-Israel Arabs to help him get the numbers he needs to form a government. He wants more. He wants a new law passed--against Netanyahu.
According to election 'custom', because Netanyahu got more votes than Gantz, Netanyahu is expected to be the first of the two to try to form a government. Netanyahu will have something like two weeks to do this. If he succeeds in forming a government with 61 seats, Gantz will not be Israel's next Prime Minister. Netanhyahu will.
But Gantz, the election loser, doesn't want to give Netanyahu that first chance. He wants to pass a new law--before Netanyahu would be chosen to try to form a government. The new law Gantz wants would ban any indicted politician from having the right to form a government coalition. If passed, Netanyahu would be out because he is currently under indictment.
Israel's political Right is livid. Gantz wants to use his presumed 61 seat alliance to pass a new law, after the election, that stipulates that anyone who is under indictment is banned from forming a government--and the first person to have that law applied against him would be Netanyahu.
Remember now, the voters have, by giving Netanyahu more votes than Gantz, expressed their democratic preference for Netanyahu, not Gantz. The vote totals make that obvious.
The voters also clearly understood that Netanyahu was currently under indictment when they gave him the most votes. This means that the voters actually voted to reject that indictment--or, put another way, the voters' preference for the indicted Netanyahu was a clear indictment of the indictment against Netanhyahu (here).
By voting for the indicted Netanyahu, Israel's voters rejected all the media and political--and now judicial--efforts to get rid of Netanyahu (here). The voters' voice is clear. They support Netanyahu. They agree with Netanyahu that the indictment(s) are nothing more than a witch hunt, an illegitimate act by an aggressive anti-Netanyahu bureaucracy to get Netanyahu out of office any way it can.
The vote count supports that.
So what do we have here? Israel's democracy (its election system) is broken. Now Gantz comes along to do what? He wants to stab Israel's broken democracy in the back.
Instead of respecting the voice of the people--something Gantz said he'd do (see below)--he seeks instead to grab the Prime Minister's chair through a legal trick, not an election: he'll get a new law passed--post-election--to change the rules. He'll have Netanyahu banned from forming a government because he's been indicted--even though Israel's voters gave Netanyahu the most votes in this election despite those indictments.
Elections are the voice of the people--the basis of a democracy. Gantz acknowledged this after the election by saying he would 'respect' the voice of the voters (here).
Then he 'doubled down'. He repeated himself: he declared, “In a democratic country, election results and the decision of the voters must be respected” (here).
Unfortunately for Israel, Gantz was lying. By seeking a retroactive law against Netanyahu, Gantz rejects Israel's most basic democratic mechanism--its election.
He will, in essence, steal the election out from under the voters' noses.
Gantz may be stabbing Israel's democracy in the back. But the Right hasn't given up, at least, not yet.
Who will prevail? Stay tuned.
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