Interior Minister Yosef Burg withdrew as a candidate for the Presidency of Israel tonight, despite public support by Premier Menachem Begin. He said on a television interview that he will not run because he insists on broader support than the Knesset may give him when it selects a new President on March 22.
Burg, a veteran leader of the National Religious Party, said he did not want to win by a slender majority which would be the case because the opposition Labor Alignment is pushing its own candidate, Chaim Herzog, a former Ambassador to the United Nations and one time chief of military intelligence.
Some observers suggested that Burg feared he could lose the election which is conducted by secret ballot. But Likud is considered unlikely to support a Labor candidate, inasmuch as outgoing President Yitzhak Navon is a former Labor MK. The deadline for formal nominations is this Friday and the government is expected to ask that it be extended in order to find an alternative to Burg.
Several times have been mentioned, among them Prof. Benjamin Akzin, who is 78, and Prof. Yosef Nedava. Both are scholars long associated with the Zionist Revisionist movement but neither is a well known public figure.
Some of Burg’s closest followers in the NRP seemed to be relieved that he dropped out of the race. They fear that without Burg in the party, his Lamifne faction would be eclipsed by the Young Guard faction headed by Education Minister Zevulun Hammer. The Presidency of Israel is largely a symbolic office divorced from party politics.
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