Former Israeli leader Barak joins with left-wing in election run
By CJ Juntereal
Published Jul 25, 2019 06:41 pm
By Reuters
Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak on Thursday announced a joint run with a left-wing party in a September election to try to end Benjamin Netanyahu’s long tenure as Israel’s leader in a campaign targeting what he calls corrupt rule.
FILE PHOTO: Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak delivers a statement in Tel Aviv, Israel June 26, 2019. REUTERS/Corinna Kern/MANILA BULLETIN
Making a political comeback at 77, Barak has been polling poorly since forming his Democratic Israel party a month ago. He has called for the creation of a strong bloc of center-left parties to challenge Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud and its allies.
“The campaign for the State of Israel began this morning. The Democratic Camp - all of us, together, will fight and win,” Barak wrote on Twitter, announcing an alliance with the left-wing Meretz party and legislator Stav Shaffir, a Labour Party defector.
In office for the past decade, Netanyahu faces a pre-trial hearing in October with Israel’s attorney-general, who has announced his intention to indict him on fraud and bribery charges stemming from three corruption investigations.
Netanyahu, 69, had denied any wrongdoing. Last weekend, he became Israel’s longest-serving prime minister.
Barak has said he returned to politics ahead of the parliamentary election to end what he termed Netanyahu’s “corrupt leadership”.
The Barak-Meretz union appeared aimed at preventing a situation in which the two small parties failed in separate runs to capture enough votes to enter parliament - a threshold of 3.25 percent of votes cast.
If they were unable separately to gain enough votes, ballots cast by thousands of left-wing supporters would go to waste, dimming prospects for a center-left bloc strong enough to replace Netanyahu’s Likud-led government.
Israelis vote for a party’s list of parliamentary candidates. No one party has ever won a governing majority on its own in an Israeli election, making coalition-building paramount in forming a new administration.
Meretz won just four of parliament’s 120 seats in an inconclusive April election, in which Netanyahu was unable to build a right-wing bloc of at least 61 legislators.
Blue and White, a centrist party led by Benny Gantz, a former armed force chief, is Likud’s strongest opponent.
Blue and White took 35 seats, as did Likud, in the April ballot and would likely seek to add the Barak-Meretz alliance to any coalition government it might lead after the September 17 vote, rather than run jointly with it in the election campaign.
FILE PHOTO: Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak delivers a statement in Tel Aviv, Israel June 26, 2019. REUTERS/Corinna Kern/MANILA BULLETIN
Making a political comeback at 77, Barak has been polling poorly since forming his Democratic Israel party a month ago. He has called for the creation of a strong bloc of center-left parties to challenge Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud and its allies.
“The campaign for the State of Israel began this morning. The Democratic Camp - all of us, together, will fight and win,” Barak wrote on Twitter, announcing an alliance with the left-wing Meretz party and legislator Stav Shaffir, a Labour Party defector.
In office for the past decade, Netanyahu faces a pre-trial hearing in October with Israel’s attorney-general, who has announced his intention to indict him on fraud and bribery charges stemming from three corruption investigations.
Netanyahu, 69, had denied any wrongdoing. Last weekend, he became Israel’s longest-serving prime minister.
Barak has said he returned to politics ahead of the parliamentary election to end what he termed Netanyahu’s “corrupt leadership”.
The Barak-Meretz union appeared aimed at preventing a situation in which the two small parties failed in separate runs to capture enough votes to enter parliament - a threshold of 3.25 percent of votes cast.
If they were unable separately to gain enough votes, ballots cast by thousands of left-wing supporters would go to waste, dimming prospects for a center-left bloc strong enough to replace Netanyahu’s Likud-led government.
Israelis vote for a party’s list of parliamentary candidates. No one party has ever won a governing majority on its own in an Israeli election, making coalition-building paramount in forming a new administration.
Meretz won just four of parliament’s 120 seats in an inconclusive April election, in which Netanyahu was unable to build a right-wing bloc of at least 61 legislators.
Blue and White, a centrist party led by Benny Gantz, a former armed force chief, is Likud’s strongest opponent.
Blue and White took 35 seats, as did Likud, in the April ballot and would likely seek to add the Barak-Meretz alliance to any coalition government it might lead after the September 17 vote, rather than run jointly with it in the election campaign.