Tzipi Livni on Wednesday slammed the Labor Party and its leader Shelly Yacimovich for employing
"political spin" and trying to negotiate a merger with her party in the media.
Livni
stated that the only way to negotiate was face-to-face and the only
person who could successfully lead a Center bloc against Prime Minster
Binyamin Netanyahu was she herself.
She added that Labor was not truly interested in a merger with her party, but rather they wanted to add her as "a free agent" for electoral purposes.
Yacimovich stated Wednesday
that her offer to Livni to join the party still stands, as Labor
postponed it's convention scheduled to be held Wednesday in a reported
attempt to give efforts to combine with Livni's party a chance.
"Twenty-four
hours are left to submit candidate lists. As far as I'm concerned,
until the last minute Livni can respond to my offer and join us,"
Yacimovich told Channel 10.
Army Radio reported on Wednesday that
Labor's decision to postpone its convention to Thursday, was made in
order to give more time to ongoing discussions about the possible
formation of a Left-Center bloc.
Yacimovich told Channel 10
Tuesday that a "rotation" by which she and Livni would alternately hold
the top spot in Labor was not an option, because Labor is a
democratically-elected party.
Labor
Mk Issac Herzog, who is second on the party list behind Yacimovich,
told Army Radio on Wednesday that he sees a merger as unlikely, as there
is no reason for a party which is running strong in polls to merge.
Polls show Labor slated to get some 20 mandates in the January 22
election.
There have also been talks about Livni merging with Yair Lapid's Yesh Atid, however sources said Monday that they had not made significant progress.
"Everyone
is talking to everyone but nothing is concrete,” a Livni adviser said.
“Tzipi said all options for enlarging the bloc and giving a fight to
Likud are still on the table.”
Former prime minister Ehud Olmert
returned from the United States late Tuesday. A delegation met with him
following his arrival to try to pressure him to run at the helm of
Kadima, but senior officials in the party said they doubted he would do
so.
Olmert is expected to hold a press conference sometime in the
next 24 hours in which he will likely announce that he is not running
in the election. Kadima MKs Dalia Itzik and Roni Bar-On, who had been
linked with Olmert, announced Wednesday that they were not running for
the 19th Knesset, likely signalling that Olmert himself would not run.