Improve the system

Hope is the emotional perspective that finds expression in practically every facet of life in this small country.

By NICHOLAI BELZER
Amnon Rubinstein, Uriel Reichman (photo credit: nicholai belzer)
Amnon Rubinstein, Uriel Reichman
(photo credit: nicholai belzer)
Hope is the emotional perspective that finds expression in practically every facet of life in this small country; of late, manifesting itself in an electoral reform advocacy organization. “Yesh Sikuy,” or “Israel’s Hope” for the Anglo audience, is steered by the recipient of the 2006 Israel Prize in Law Amnon Rubinstein, and Uriel Reichman, a jurist who initiated and led the team that attempted to draft a constitution for Israel back in the ‘80s. He and Rubinstein also helped pen a Bill of Rights to complement the national charter, to no avail.
I met with professors Reichman and Rubinstein on the campus of another one of their creations, the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzliya, where Reichman serves as president and founder.
The pair strikes you as the kind of duo that fulfills the archetypal needs of any healthy NGO: thoughtful Rubinstein radiating the mien of an idealist, and serious Reichman bearing the carriage of a pragmatist.
Their initiative can be neatly fitted into a sound bite provided by Rubinstein’s opening comment: “We would like to rid the government of the need to be dependent on swing parties.”
The swing party is the culprit behind the 23-month life span of the typical Israeli administration. Individual ministers’ terms are even more fluid – 18 months on average.
With statistics like these and others the charge is laid that any constructive accommodation with the private sector is made difficult by the instability of governments and their remnant armies of career bureaucrats harboring defunct loyalties to ousted legislators.
“This situation is due to the coalition system. The system creates many smaller parties. You must build a coalition of six or seven parties and the result is that you have large governments, which themselves are made up of ministers who are political foes, each keeping to his own interests,” Rubinstein explains.
This would appear to reflect the popular sentiment shared by observers of the Israeli arena, like David Brooks, senior editor of The Weekly Standard who noted that “The most resourceful Israelis are going into technology and commerce, not politics. This has had a desultory effect on the nation’s public life, but an invigorating one on its economy.” Those comments are more or less representative of the situation here, where a palpable dichotomy between business and administrative acumen only muddles the promise and potential that is Israel.
YESH SIKUY would move to consolidate the schismatic political scene and clean up shop.
“This will not eliminate the Arab parties or ultra- Orthodox, but it may force mergers, like with Meretz and Labor. We think we will have a Knesset of four or five parties which, more importantly, will not extort the smaller ones,” in Rubinstein’s estimation.
Reichman elaborates, “Over time the proposal is likely to produce two large Zionist parties, a left-center party, and a right-center party, and some satellites. But the most important thing is that the prime minister will be able to run his affairs without looking for who will stab him and betray him or who is trying to negotiate political support to create a new coalition.”
A smaller, tidier Knesset would afford an administrative effectiveness not currently realized, with 70 percent of all proposed legislation never executed. This impotence of government is to be expected, they lament.
Rubinstein continues, “We need to attack major shortcomings of the present system like the rule of the minority. What we have to do systemically is to provide governability and stability to help allow the majority to run the affairs of this country.”
A Western-oriented nation to be sure, the Jewish state has a comfortable amount of space to grow still more occidental, or at the very least, less Byzantine.
“Imagine the US having such a system as ours! Imagine groups in Italy or Ireland forming their own parties.
Imagine [the US] Congress made up of 10 to 15 parties. Can you imagine America surviving these tensions? Proportional representation must be mitigated by something that mixes governability and effectiveness.
There was never a debate on this [in Israel]; but in the middle of the War of Independence, they had to appease all rival elements to create something. There was never a debate on the pros and cons,” says Rubinstein.
The leitmotifs of their political paradigm become salient from here on out – bribery, exploitation and a Prussian nostalgia. Rubinstein assures me “Israel is more like Weimar [Germany] than any other country I can think of. And the Germans have learned from Weimar. They have since introduced a threshold of 5 percent, where a party must get 5% of the general vote to be represented in Parliament.”
The modest 3% threshold being proposed by Yesh Sikuy would appear to be a result of their historical consciousness.
The theme is furthered by Reichman, who heralds the end of the current electoral regime.
“I want to emphasize that the present system has a corrupting influence. It happens when a small swing party, with maybe four seats in existence, has the power to dissolve the government because we need 61 votes in investiture. So the four or six members demand extortionate prices at the expense of the majority. This is extreme corruption. This is political bribery on a large scale and it causes the young to be skeptical of the democratic process. We’ve reached a dead end in this system.”
THE PROSPECT of being co-opted does not appeal to small parties with, say, three seats in the Knesset, like Meretz. Party head Zehava Gal-On is very aware of the kind of reform the NGO is lobbying for, and harbors “strong ideas about it,” as related to me by her aide. As Meretz would be one of the players that electoral reform would relatively disenfranchise, Gal-On’s opposition is perfectly understandable.
Reichman provides a background for understanding our current predicament.
“The founders under the Mandate Powers and Zionist congresses, in both cases, they didn’t have executive power – but they were united. You cannot succeed in anything in the modern world where everything is connected and interdisciplinary without a spirit of efficient cooperation among our ministers.”
From its beginnings, the system seemed destined to reform itself, as the rudiments of democracy have become more sophisticated over the years. What’s peculiar is that even the Knesset’s own Web page appears to lament its inheritance of a “rigid system.”
Visitors to the official government site-cum-confessional, curious to learn about the Middle East’s one legitimate democracy, will find that “Unlike most of the Western parliamentary democracies, the system in Israel is followed in an extreme manner.”
And so it is. The manner of Israel’s electoral system could be considered extreme on account of the fact that the only limitation posed toward some upstart party keeping a seat warm in the Knesset is the current 2% qualifying threshold. This system of hyper-proportional representation, where voters across the country vote for party lists and for no person in particular, wasn’t always so generous – it used to be more so, in fact.
The qualifying threshold was a pathetic 1% up until the 13th Knesset (1992-6); it was bumped to its present 2% during the 16th Knesset (2003-6).
KEEPING WITH the trend, Yesh Sikuy is lobbying for a modest 3% threshold.
According to Reichman, “The political environment is deprived of the participation of the majority of Israelis, and this is a result of the way the primaries are.
All parties really get only 2% of the people who have the right to vote... and the result is often a situation where people with extreme views penetrate the Knesset.
It has to be understood that democracy means participation.
When you have democratic rules and don’t use them, you actually make a mockery out of the democratic system.”
A sound rejoinder would be to point out that making a mockery through voicing one’s views is part and parcel of the democratic system. This is certainly be the view of a good number of proactive citizens on the political scene, as the multitude of political parties in existence can attest. Although 13 parties are currently represented in the Knesset, there are literally dozens more vying for a single-digit morsel of the popular vote.
One party, Calcala, was impelled into existence on account of the one thing it finds desperately lacking at the moment – economic reform.
It wants and petitions that the country should emulate a number of American economic mores and standards; Calcala is currently lobbying for its proprietary proposal – replacing the monthly paycheck with weekly wages. This would be more fluid, friendly and financially sensible on a number of levels, so it enthusiastically demonstrates to anyone interested, as it did to MK Ya’acov Katz a month after their registration as a party in May this year.
The party was founded by US-Israel dual citizens and brothers Daniel (48) and Benny (35) Goldstein, a businessman and law student respectively. Before being officially registered as a party, their movement was active for several years centered in Ashkelon under the name “America Kan!” (America Here!) before being rebranded the politically correct “Finance” Party.
The Goldsteins are hoping to win at least three seats in the next election, scheduled to take place almost a year and a half from now.
Goldstein the elder pitches: “Until now, all parties were idealistic, left or right. Calcala is focused solely on helping individuals. All other parties are haredi [ultra- Orthodox] or hiloni [secular]; they’re sectarian.”
And so it is that Calcala and Yesh Sikuy have something in common: they both describe themselves as anti-sectarian apolitical organizations, and both are working toward infusing Israel with Western ways, whether financial or political.
When informed of Yesh Sikuy’s efforts to raise the qualifying threshold to 3%, Goldstein the younger reacted disapprovingly. “I’m against it. All parties should get a chance to be heard.”
That a party can be birthed in any spring of any year is a source of real consternation for the professors. In their view, the genuine trials confronting the state are emanating from the electoral and not the economic sphere.
In any event, support for electoral reform along the lines proposed by the professors appears somewhat challenging in a political landscape where spiritual leaders appoint the candidates within the religious parties. Yesh Sikuy has the support of at least a portion of the citizenry, along with the kind of “protektzia” (connections) Israelis recognize and covet as an indispensable social capital.
Although the details of their proposal were worked out by students and staff at IDC, former Mossad chief Meir Dagan is running the operation of the NGO as director, with former head of IAF Eitan Ben-Eliyahu on the board. Suffice it to say that patriots never truly retire, what with the revolving doors and opportunities that small, new and innovative countries like to provide.
Alas, one of the few things abundantly clear in the political haze is that there is room for improvement.
Reichman believes we can only benefit by emulating successful systems, as well.
“We’re speaking of a mitigated political system, but not one which is a loose cannon. The system proposed is typical of certain EU systems. It is a parliamentary system, like in Scandinavia, which provides that the head of the largest party becomes prime minister who can nominate a cabinet without a vote of confidence in Parliament – He can move ahead.
It’s not a presidential system. He has to run a nation even when there is no ability to form a functioning coalition.”
A mixed system of general elections alongside regional elections is performed in a number of countries, but this is not the case in the US and the UK – winner-take-all systems, with one representative from each district. This is not the model that Reichman and Rubinstein think appropriate for Israel.
“So our model is more in the spirit of Continental Europe. And in Continental Europe, they learned from their own past mistakes. A system like our present one in Israel, you can find in Italy and Germany prior to the Second World War, and they produced problems,” warns Reichman.
TO REFLECT on some of the seemingly reasonable proposals being forwarded into the national conversation: An electoral system balanced by proportional and regional coordination, where half the Knesset seats are determined through 17 electoral regions, and the other half through national elections; a streamlined voting process via the dual-purpose ballot (for simultaneous regional and national votes); a government capped at 16 ministers, staffed by professionals who are not MKs; a four-year term of office for the prime minister whose premature dismissal can be effected only with a special majority of 73 MKs (61% of the Knesset).
For the bedlam that is the present Israeli electoral system, fundamental Western controls like these would appear nefarious to the factionally minded. The needed reform threatens the survival of a number of power brokers. And still, as in the ‘80s, Reichman remains the optimist. But is his vision feasible? “Well, there is public pressure from beneath which will only grow, and a political awareness recognizing that the time has come to change the system. So there is hope.”
In other words, what could hardly be done for 12 tribes with any peremptory satisfaction will be attempted with 33 parties and 17 districts. More than hope, and more than luck, Israel is obliged to progress, and avail itself of the blessing of old-fashioned popular will.


Related Tags
Israel Prize