Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion has expressed his readiness to try to form another Cabinet, if he is entrusted with the task, it was announced here today by Josef Almogi, secretary-general of the Mapai Party.
He made that announcement at a news conference here after returning from Sdeh Boker, Mr. Ben-Gurion’s home in the South, where the Premier and his party’s principal executive officer discussed the results of Tuesday’s Knesset elections. The main task confronting the Mapai leaders now is where to look for partners for the next coalition Government. Feelers to other party leaders are expected to be put out in the next few days.
Mr. Almogi made it clear that there are only two alternatives facing Mapai’s efforts to form a new Government. Since it is assumed that, in any event, the National Religious Party would join the new coalition, the question is only whether the other partners are to be left-wing Mapam and Achdut Avodah, or the Liberal Party. But a Mapai coalition with all these three parties does not seem feasible, because it is assumed Mr. Ben-Gurion may find it impossible to reconcile the varying demands for Cabinet posts.
Mapai will, in the first instance, sound all parties except the right-wing Herut and the Communists. Negotiations are bound to be protracted, with hard bargaining by both leftist parties and by the Liberals. The Liberals have indicated they will join a coalition — but only if they enter the Government as full partners and are given key portfolios. Mapam quarters insist that Mapai, which is in a minority in the Knesset, cannot demand for itself a majority of the Cabinet posts.
The Mapai secretariat will hold its first meeting, to discuss the situation, next Sunday, when Mr. Ben-Gurion will outline his ideas about the plans for formation and composition of the next Government. Mr. Ben-Gurion will also address a mass-meeting of Mapai election workers at Mapai headquarters here.
Pinhas Lavon, ousted Histadrut secretary-general whose dispute with Mr. Ben-Gurion over responsibility for a 1954 “security mishap” caused the political difficulties which led to the new elections, declared here today that the election results amounted to “a severe setback” for Mapai. He said the fact that 50,000 former Mapai voters had shifted to other parties, while several thousand voters left their ballots blank, should force the Mapai leadership to “stop practicing punishment.”
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