Some 37,000 members of Prof. Yigal Yadin’s new Democratic Movement for Change (DESH) will cast ballots tomorrow to select the movement’s list of Knesset candidates in the May 17 elections. It will be the first time in Israel’s history that a political faction holds what amounts to a primary and DESH is making the most of that fact.
In newspaper advertisements it noted that for the first time the rank-and-file will select its representatives to parliament without the interference of party bosses and pre-selected nominating committees. Booklets containing the names, biographical data and photographs of the 154 DESH candidates for the Knesset and the 300 candidates for the movement’s National Council, were distributed to members to help them make their choices.
DESH is a coalition of several disparate political groups. These include Shinui (Change) headed by Prof. Amnon Rubinstein which is the last of the once numerous post-Yom Kippur War protest movements; a core group of 77 original supporters of Yadin; former MK Shmuel Tamir of the Free Center; a group of Labor Party defectors headed by industrialist Meir Amit; the Zionist Panthers, representing Oriental Jews; many Arabs and Druze; and several thousand individuals who have joined the movement on a non-party basis.
TWO LABOR VETERANS BOW OUT
Meanwhile, two veteran Labor MKs announced that they would not stand for re-election to the Knesset. Itzhak Ben Aharon, a former Cabinet minister and former Histadrut Secretary General, who served in parliament for 20 years, said he could not adjust to present conditions in which, he claimed, ideology has been subordinated to personal ambition. Israel Kargman, chairman of the Knesset Finance Committee, said he decided not to run because 20 years in the Knesset was “enough.”
Gideon Hausner, who was selected to head the Independent Liberal Party list after ILP leader Moshe Kol announced he would not stand for re-election, has assumed chairmanship of the party’s propaganda and information division. Gen. Ezer Weizman, head of Likud’s election campaign committee, has invited Gen. Ariel Sharon, head of the new Shlomzion movement, to return to the Likud fold “where he belongs.”
Zevulun Hammer and Yehuda Ben Meir, two of the militant members of the National Religious Party’s “young guard,” have been assured of safe places on the NRP’s election list. Hammer is expected to get second place after former Interior Minister Yosef Burg and Ben Meir will place fifth.
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