Livni wants Mofaz as No. 2 in party list

Offers him to head Kadima primary elections staff; Barak announces primary to determine Labor MK list.

By JPOST.COM, SHELLY PAZ
Mofaz 224.88 (photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski [file])
Mofaz 224.88
(photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski [file])
Kadima leader Tzipi Livni assured Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz of her desire to see him placed as second in the party list on Thursday morning. Livni also proposed that Mofaz head the party's primary elections staff. The two discussed whether or not the second place in the party list would be safeguarded for Mofaz. Livni emphasized that his position in the party was unrelated to the technical and legal issues surrounding the safeguarding of a party list position. The Kadima leader told Mofaz that she would back any legal solution he found regarding the composition of the list. However, his rank in the list had no relevance to the government she planned to assemble, Livni told him. The two met following an earlier meeting the previous day during which Kadima's MKs and ministers gathered at the Knesset to decide how to address the demands by activists loyal to Mofaz to secure his position, which would spare him having to compete in the upcoming primary to determine the party's Knesset candidates for the next election. On Tuesday night it was reported that several activists who supported Mofaz for Kadima chairman had threatened to "ruin" all of Livni's supporters - MKs and ministers - in the upcoming primary by omitting them from their rankings for the candidates list. Mofaz's associates denied that the demand to guarantee his position came from him. Meanwhile, Labor Chairman Ehud Barak dispelled doubt regarding the party's candidate list for the upcoming elections, announcing that primaries will be held despite objections from within Labor. Barak made the announcement at a meeting with Labor ministers. On Tuesday, senior figures in the party, including MKs Binyamin Ben-Eliezer and Amir Peretz, rallied behind a proposition by MK Yoram Marziano that Labor's Knesset list mirror the current list of MKs. Marziano suggested that the party take a "snapshot" of its list of Knesset candidates from the 2006 elections. Others, however, including MKs Ophir Paz-Pines, Ami Ayalon and Shelly Yacimovich, opposed the move, which Yacimovich called "undemocratic." "We must go to open, transparent primaries; any other way will hurt the party," Yacimovich added. Barak has charged MK Eitan Cabel, the party's secretary-general and a close confidante, with running the party's election headquarters.