Israel’s News Blog Magazine: Daily Stories Video and PhotosFollowing the observance of the fifth anniversary since the assassination of the former Moledet party leader Rahavin (Ghandi) Zeevi, and the possibility of his “successor”, Yisrael Beitanu leader Avigdor Lieberman joining Ehud Olmert’s government coalition, some interesting new political plans have been in the offing in order to accommodate Lieberman’s ultra right wing political views. Olmert, possibly in a last ditch effort to save his waning political fortunes, is seriously considering drafting changes in the country’s governmental decision making to enable a new presidential position to be created in which the holder of that office will have wide ranging powers, including those involving national defense. And Lieberman, due to his very frank views on these matters, may be just the man to assist the Prime Minister in this undertaking.
Lieberman’s views, not unlike his predecessor, Zeevi, call for harsh dealings with the Palestinians, including “inviting” most of them to leave their present domiciles in Gaza and the West Bank for residences elsewhere. He also has very ‘direct’ ideas on how to deal with both Lebanon and Iran, Israel’s most dangerous security problems.
Olmert’s idea is the create a directly elected Presidency similar to that in countries like the U.S.A. who will have much more power that Israel’s present presidency, whose position is largely ceremonial, and who is elected by a secret ballot of Knesset parliamentarians, without any participation by the national electorate. The Prime Minister also wants to combine Lieberman’s party into a ‘unity’ government, with a ‘presidential regime’ possibly headed by none other than either Olmert or Lieberman – or both, without the myriad of small political parties which have always been the rule in Israeli politics. Their ‘plan’ is to consolidate political parties into two major ones similar to the Republican and Democratic party system which has been to norm in America for the past 150 years. One can only wonder, in this ‘new order’ framework, is who will head each side?
Israeli politics has never had political parties who garnished enough governing mandates to have a direct power majority in the country’s 120 member parliament. This reality has always resulted in need to form coalition governments involving several small parties, representing various interest groups, such as the religious population, ethnic minorities (Arabs, etc.) and now, even the golden-agers (the new Pensioners Party). Knesset parliamentarians are not elected by the people, as American Congressmen are, but as members of party slate lists, whose colorful party conventions and ‘primaries’ result in often violent internal power jockeying by hopeful party members, with all the ‘backroom’ activities thereof.
With Olmert and Lieberman’s idea of a separately elected executive (their prototype, of course), the present coalition dealings can avoided and this all powerful leader can then be free to make important decisions concerning the country’s national welfare.
The main concern many of us have is: who will be calling the shots?
4 Comments
How do you like your borsche? Hot or Cold?
It is sad to see how an extreme fanatic like Liberman reaches
the political position he is in,all thanks to a weasle politician
like Olmert who wants to save his political neck at all costs,
where are all the sane politicians in Israel? have they all lost
their minds? or their guts? what a waist.
It’ll be one extreme fanatic against another: Lieberman against
Ahmadinejad.
As a political scientist who specializes in this sort of thing, I can only call the “presidential” ideas borderline authoritarian (and here I am actually talking about the Katsav commission proposal, not Lieberman’s, which I have not see in detail). The proposals for the electoral system are just mad, in the Israeli social context.
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