Israeli Politics : Can we learn something from them ?
This blog has been noticeably quiet from my side on its usual focus, Indian politics. There have been a lot of significant political happenings recently that I want to write about, but I have had to necessarily distract myself to do my bit for my late friend Manju, who was killed ruthlessly for doing his job in Uttar Pradesh. May his soul rest in peace.
Ariel Sharon, the Prime Minister of Israel & the founder-leader of Likud Party did the unthinkable on November 21, 2005 by quitting the party he helped build & started a new party, called Kadima (Forward). Facing increasing opposition against his Unilateral Disengagement Plan from his own right-wing party from hard-line rightwingers, especially important leaders such as Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Israel's politics & even its existence have been dominated by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the resultant Arab-Israeli conflict. The state of Israel was created by the victorious Allied powers in the aftermath of holocaust & the Second World War as compensation to Jews. Israel still does not have a written constitution, and they have chosen to write one as they go along.
It is fascinating to read how party-list proportional system of representation has affected Israeli Politics and Israel's aborted experiment with direct elections for the Prime Minister through run-off voting, especially as Israel has already done in the past what I was recommending as an electoral system for India.
Israel's Prime Ministers have always had to forge coalitions to form a government as the country's proportional system of representation makes it difficult for any single party to win a majority in the 120 seat Knesset (Israel's unicameral parliament). In this scenario, their politicians have demonstrated tremendous maturity as very often its two largest parties - Likud (equivalent of Conservatives or Republicans in Israel) & Mapai (equivalent of Labour or Democrats) have forged coalitions to form fairly stable governments. Israel has had 11 Prime Ministers in about the same number of years to India's 13, and the maximum that any Israeli Prime Minister has served is 8 years, compared to about 17 each for Nehru & Indira Gandhi. Its former prime ministers have not shied away from swallowing pride & becoming ministers in their successor's cabinets, something almost unthinkable in Indian politics.
I would however concentrate on Ariel Sharon's decision to move to the centre from his earlier right-wing (& left-wing even earlier than that) by quitting his party at a time when he could have sleep-walked through an election campaign & still won the elections, had he continued with the Likud Party. He & his policies coninue to be widely popular & his disengagement plan also has popular support, as opinion polls have shown.
It is remarkable that Israel has politicians that really do put national interest first (Sharon, after all might be wrong about the disengagement plan that it will increase security) but that he has taken the risk to start a new party from scratch with policies diametrically opposite to the ones Likud & he himself advocated all these years shows tremendous political courage on his part. I wonder if during his days as Prime Minister when he was facing a lot of opposition from Swadeshi Jagran Manch, RSS & hardliners within BJP over his government's economic policies, Atal Behari Vajpayee ever thought about starting afresh. Highly unlikely. Alas, he favoured consensus !
Israel's politics & even its existence have been dominated by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the resultant Arab-Israeli conflict. The state of Israel was created by the victorious Allied powers in the aftermath of holocaust & the Second World War as compensation to Jews. Israel still does not have a written constitution, and they have chosen to write one as they go along.
It is fascinating to read how party-list proportional system of representation has affected Israeli Politics and Israel's aborted experiment with direct elections for the Prime Minister through run-off voting, especially as Israel has already done in the past what I was recommending as an electoral system for India.
Israel's Prime Ministers have always had to forge coalitions to form a government as the country's proportional system of representation makes it difficult for any single party to win a majority in the 120 seat Knesset (Israel's unicameral parliament). In this scenario, their politicians have demonstrated tremendous maturity as very often its two largest parties - Likud (equivalent of Conservatives or Republicans in Israel) & Mapai (equivalent of Labour or Democrats) have forged coalitions to form fairly stable governments. Israel has had 11 Prime Ministers in about the same number of years to India's 13, and the maximum that any Israeli Prime Minister has served is 8 years, compared to about 17 each for Nehru & Indira Gandhi. Its former prime ministers have not shied away from swallowing pride & becoming ministers in their successor's cabinets, something almost unthinkable in Indian politics.
I would however concentrate on Ariel Sharon's decision to move to the centre from his earlier right-wing (& left-wing even earlier than that) by quitting his party at a time when he could have sleep-walked through an election campaign & still won the elections, had he continued with the Likud Party. He & his policies coninue to be widely popular & his disengagement plan also has popular support, as opinion polls have shown.
It is remarkable that Israel has politicians that really do put national interest first (Sharon, after all might be wrong about the disengagement plan that it will increase security) but that he has taken the risk to start a new party from scratch with policies diametrically opposite to the ones Likud & he himself advocated all these years shows tremendous political courage on his part. I wonder if during his days as Prime Minister when he was facing a lot of opposition from Swadeshi Jagran Manch, RSS & hardliners within BJP over his government's economic policies, Atal Behari Vajpayee ever thought about starting afresh. Highly unlikely. Alas, he favoured consensus !
posted by Vimal at
10:18 am
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