At stake for party MKs are a dwindling number of seats. Recent polls suggest the party could shrink from its current 19 to as few as 11 Knesset seats.
By HAVIV RETTIG GURBarak grin 224 88(photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski [file])
Party chairman Ehud Barak decided Thursday to send the Labor Party to a primary election for its Knesset slate, to be held on December 2. The move puts an end to speculation over what Labor's Knesset list will look like going into the general elections called for February 10.
At stake for party MKs are a dwindling number of seats. Recent polls suggest the party could shrink from its current 19 to as few as 11 Knesset seats.
Between its unpopularity and the debts incurred in recent years, many MKs had hoped to prevent a primary, which would cost money, encourage infighting among opposing factions and waste precious weeks in which the party could be campaigning in the general elections.
"It's unpleasant," said MK Colette Avital, 12th on the current list. "We just did this two years ago, and it wastes lots of money and time. But I support the primaries. Better a wasteful primary than having some committee appoint me to the list."
For municipal election candidates, too, Avital believes the primaries are important. Labor has been largely unable to help these candidates financially in the coming November municipal elections, so "the least we can give them is the privilege of expressing the opinion by choosing the party list."
Some Labor MKs had opposed the move, particularly Yoram Marciano, Nadia Hilou and Shakib Shanan. Others, including Shelly Yacimovich and Ami Ayalon, despite being ninth and sixth, respectively, on the current list, came out publicly in support of the primaries.
A spokesman for Ami Ayalon said he supported the primaries because Labor couldn't skip this step when Kadima and the Likud had just instituted it.
The decision to go to primaries will be approved in the meeting of the Labor central committee this coming Thursday.
Barak also decided to reopen a discussion on the reserved slots on the party list, apparently to help MK Shalom Simhon, a powerful representative of the moshavim movement, to move up from the 16th slot reserved for a moshavim representative.
Of the first 20 places on the Labor list, four are currently reserved for women, one for moshavim, one for kibbutzim, one for the Arab sector, one for poor neighborhoods and one for the left-wing religious party Meimad.
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