Yacimovich aims for 3rd slot on Labor list

MK Yacimovich hopes to land top portfolio in upcoming Knesset.

By GIL STERN STERN HOFFMAN

JANUARY 12, 2015 21:01

Shelly Yacimovich (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM) — Shelly Yacimovich

(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)

Thirty-six candidates will face off in Tuesday’s Labor Party primary, but all eyes will be on MK Shelly Yacimovich, to see whether she will win the third slot on the list after her successor as Labor leader, Isaac Herzog, and his running mate, Hatnua head Tzipi Livni.

Labor’s 48,904 members will be eligible to vote from 10 a.m.

to 10 p.m. in 400 polling stations in 76 locations around the country. Results will be revealed the following morning.

Yacimovich, who has never been a minister, said she hopes to earn a top portfolio in the next government by performing well in the primary. Candidates who have a chance of beating her include MKs Eitan Cabel, Erel Margalit and Merav Michaeli.

Candidates have denied reports that they have made a political deal to block Yacimovich.

Cabel even asked his supporters to place Yacimovich higher and give him the third slot.

Yacimovich took the rare step of asking her supporters on social media Monday to stop sending her money, because she hit the maximum amount for donations permitted by law.

She received NIS 274,000 in contributions from 956 donors in 217 communities across the country.

“I initiated the Obama model of small donations in Israel in 2009 and it has proven itself,” she wrote on her Facebook page.

Unlike Likud, which has only two women among its top 24 candidates, Labor has four slots reserved for women among its top 20. Besides Yacimovich and Michaeli, MK Stav Shaffir is expected to win one of them.

There will also be female candidates in slots reserved for candidates from Hatnua. The 11th slot on Labor’s list is reserved for a security figure, who Herzog said would be revealed only after the primary.

Two veteran Labor figures who will not be on the list will be former ministers Binyamin Ben-Eliezer and Avishay Braverman, both of whom have announced their retirement from politics.

Unlike in Likud, which had problems with vote counting, in Labor the results will be counted by computers.

“We have been practicing and preparing for any eventuality,” Labor secretary-general Hilik Bar told Army Radio. “We intend to get it right.”