Many voters feel they have nobody to vote for if ideology is important to them. Third party voters have no parliamentary representation, because the numbers just don't add up. Only the winner per district gets in. Great Britain has a weak and dying third party that is totally under-represented compared to the national votes it gets.
In Israel, you don't vote for a Prime Minister. You vote for ideology, a political party, and the seats in Knesset are allocated in proportion to the votes. The law was amended a couple of decades ago to prevent one-person parties. The minimum votes to get a Knesset seat are enough for three. The party that can pull together a ruling coalition chooses the Prime Minister.
Some Israeli political parties have long complex history and name changes, while others are very new. And of course, some have totally left the scene are are just postscripts in history. Israeli Center and Center-Left parties haven't lasted very long. There are always new parties, usually led by newbie politicians clamoring to take over as secular messiahs.
The latest of these would-be leaders is Yair (son of Tommy) Lapid.
Both Labor and Kadima would have had been overjoyed to have benefited from his media savvy and charisma. They're all campaigning for the same voters. Instead, unless someone gives him an offer he can't refuse, he'll be joining the competition against them both. That's fine with me.
|Photo credit: Miriam Alster
Former journalist and television persona Yair Lapid is set to establish a new political party soon called Atid ('Future'), putting an end to weeks of speculation that he might use another defunct party's existing infrastructure. (complete article)
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