President Rivlin urges clean and fair elections, warns of incitement

The political system in Israel continues to be largely based on group identity, he said: "Tell me which tribe you belong to, and I'll tell you which party you vote for."

By GREER FAY CASHMAN
Updated: DECEMBER 27, 2018 01:33
President Rivlin spoke at the Dov Lautman Conference on Educational Policy. (photo credit: AMOS BEN GERSHOM, GPO)
President Rivlin spoke at the Dov Lautman Conference on Educational Policy.
(photo credit: AMOS BEN GERSHOM, GPO)
President Reuven Rivlin has urged all involved in the upcoming Knesset elections in April, to play fair and clean. Speaking on Wednesday at the Dov Lautman memorial conference on education at the Open University, Rivlin several times repeated the need for the elections to be fair and clean.
A former MK and Knesset speaker himself, Rivlin is well aware of the diversities in ideology, opinion and fair play that divide the 120 legislators.
The political system in Israel continues to be largely based on group identity, he said: “Tell me which tribe you belong to, and I’ll tell you which party you vote for.”
Rivlin was hopeful that in time, Israel would progress from this kind of political system to a system based on ideas, of shared ideologies and shared interests – and that future governments would be based more on parties than on coalitions.
In the future, he would like to see political disputes between haredim (ultra-Orthodox) in the coalition with haredim in the opposition, simply because of their different approaches to situations. Even if Israel is not yet there, he said, it is on the way, and changing social and economic processes will make it happen.
As for keeping the elections clean, Rivlin was particularly concerned of the role played by social media in terms of incitement and character defamation, and called for fair mindedness when posting election material on social media outlets.