|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
|
The only way to achieve a viable post-election coalition, many pundits say, is a broadly based joint government - and it may be one of the cards Netanyahu has up his sleeve. (May 16) - All those eager for the elections to pass so the cannibalism of this campaign will finally come to an end should hold off the celebrations. The polls are uniformly predicting a Knesset that will again be badly split, rendering the country - once more - stalemated and close to ungovernable. Out of the parliamentary darkness someone will surely switch on a flashlight that others will call a beacon of light - the idea of a national unity government. Over the years, national unity governments have come to be seen as the country's backstop, its safeguard, the secret weapon that - if all else fails - can save the country from itself. The people can't decide? No problem. The parties can't form a workable, stable coalition? Not to worry. Just cobble together a national unity government and things will work out. Indeed, even before the votes have been cast, politicians from across the political spectrum are talking - most privately, though some on the record - of the inevitability of national unity. "I think a national unity government is almost certain, no matter who wins," said Alex Lubotzky, the former Third Way MK who has an outside shot at a ministerial position if One Israel's Ehud Barak forms the next government. "Both the math and the situation will make it necessary." No matter which polls you look at, said Lubotzky, if Binyamin Netanyahu wins, he will have to piece together a coalition from a variety of small parties with different interests. "This will bring us back to the situation we had before [the government fell]," Lubotzky said. "The former government collapsed over the Wye agreement, but this agreement did not just disappear. Netanyahu will have to implement it, so he will have to widen the coalition or else we will once again be facing new elections." And if Barak wins, Lubotzky continued, "I have no doubt that he will want to form a national unity government." Indeed, that Barak and Netanyahu were able to reach an agreement on a national unity government last summer, through the mediation of former finance minister Yaakov Neeman, shows that there is no ideological barrier to such a move. That agreement fell apart at the last minute, Lubotzky said, when both sides smelled new elections around the corner and were afraid of what an agreement then to form a joint government would do to their chances at the polls. "Barak is rational and very smart," said Lubotzky, who left the Third Way to join the Center Party, and then left the Center Party to join One Israel. "He understands the challenges he would face trying to push through a final agreement with the Palestinians. Whatever final-status agreement is reached will necessitate major concessions, perhaps the uprooting of settlements. "If you were the prime minister, would you not also want to get the Likud inside in order to get their stamp of approval?" But why would Netanyahu or the Likud agree to such a move? The answer, said Lubotzky, is simple: political survival. Whoever loses - Netanyahu or Barak - will immediately face challenges from inside his own party. But if the person who loses the race joins the government of his rival as a minister, it will give him greater status and the ability to better deflect leadership challenges inside his own party. And the reason the Likud would be willing to join a Barak-led government, Lubotzky speculated, is because "once you are a minister, it is difficult to get used to the idea of sitting in the opposition and asking parliamentary questions." As to the chances of One Israel joining a Netanyahu-led government, Lubotzky said there is sure to be opposition inside the party to this move, but that most MKs would fall in line, rather then again have to face the electorate. But Hebrew University political science lecturer Reuven Hazan said that all who are relying on a national unity government - like the ones the country had with mixed results in the 1980s under Yitzhak Shamir and Shimon Peres - to magically save the day do not understand the structural changes wrought by the direct elections of the prime minister. If in 1984 and 1988 the parties could negotiate the formation of a national unity government based on complete parity - meaning a rotation of the top ministries, including the prime ministry - the direct election of the prime minister has removed that option. Anyone who enters a national unity government now will enter it not as one among equals, but rather in an inferior position relative to the prime minister. "The rotation option no longer exists," Hazan said. "Once the prime minister resigns, as he would have to in order to rotate with the head of the other party, there must - by law - be new elections." This makes it nearly impossible to form a workable coalition based on badly splintered results at the ballot box. This is even more true, Hazan said, if Netanyahu wins the race, for prime minister, yet One Israel - as Labor did in 1996 - outpolls Likud in the Knesset races. "If Barak loses by a few thousand votes, yet his Knesset faction - as all the polls indicate - emerges bigger than the Likud, and if he sees that he can bring down the government, what incentive will he have to join Netanyahu, perhaps as foreign minister, and essentially be his spokesman?" Hazan asked. In the 1980s, he said, the motivation to unite was that power would be transferred to the other side in two years. Hazan, who termed the direct elections a "disaster," said the system no longer provides an option for forming a government based on election results that split the country. The end result, he said, will either be perpetually stalemated governments or a move to once again change the system. Regardless of Hazan's misgivings, one person who has consistently advocated a national unity government for two years has been Industry and Trade Minister Natan Sharansky. Since Sharansky - who will likely be able to join a government under either Netanyahu or Barak - is expected to be one of those wielding massive power after the elections, his position on national unity is telling. "Once a first round is over, I suspect Sharansky will start talking about national unity again," said Ron Dermer, one of Sharansky's strategists and Yisrael Ba'aliya's pollster. "This is very important for him, and something he believes in. One of his biggest criticisms of Oslo was that consensus was never an issue, there was no feeling that you needed the widest support possible to push something like that through." Sharansky, according to Dermer, is likely to advise both candidates to look in the direction of national unity. "The odds of implementing national unity under Netanyahu are high," Dermer said, "while under Barak they are lower." The paradox, he pointed out, is that from a strategic point of view, a Right-led national unity government is less critical than one led by the Left. "In order to make sure the peace process moves forward," Dermer said, "you have to make sure everyone is on board - otherwise the ship will sail, but half the people won't be on it. When Netanyahu moves on the peace process, the Left will support him." But in order for the Left to move, he said, it will have to get the Right on board, otherwise they will fight it fiercely. One barrier to formation of a national unity government, Dermer said, is the winners' and losers' attitude that prevails in the country, an attitude whereby those who win think they can do whatever they want with even the slimmest majority and don't take into consideration the country's other half. "The question," Dermer said, "is whether there will be a force strong enough to convince the leadership that nothing will work if half the country is inside the loop and the other half feels completely left out." Lubotzky believes that this mentality has changed over the last seven years, since both the Right, between 1992 and 1996, and the Left, from 1996 to 1999, know what it is like to be on the losing end of the stick. According to Dermer, national unity may already emerge as an issue between a first and second round of balloting for prime minister, if a second round is necessitated. In this case, he said, it is likely that Netanyahu - knowing that much of the public has a soft spot for unity ideas - may very well make this a major part of his electioneering. "He can't talk much about a national unity government before the first round," Dermer said, "because that would scare off haredim who are opposed to the idea. But afterward, when he sees the results of the Knesset elections, he could say to the nation, 'You want unity, I'll do it.'" This would put Barak in an uncomfortable position, Dermer said, "because he cannot say the same thing, since this could lead to the Arabs staying home in the second round out of the belief that a national unity government would be formed in any event and there is little real difference who heads it, Netanyahu or Barak." Barak, Dermer pointed out, will need a high voter turnout by Arabs in the second round to unseat Netanyahu. "National unity is one of the cards Bibi has up his sleeve," Dermer said. "If I were Netanyahu's strategist, this is what I would tell him to play." Regardless of the results of Monday's prime minister race, this is one card the nation is sure to hear much of in the coming few months.
Links in this section:
Links to other sections: | |
|
Click here for feedback and comments. © 1999, The Jerusalem Post - All rights reserved 
| |
