The official results of yesterday’s election, in which nearly 80 percent of the 2.2 million eligible voters went to the polls, will be published in 10 days. At that time, President Ephraim Katzir, after consultations with all the parties, will call on Menachem Beigin, leader of the victorious Likud, to form a government. Beigin will then have 42 days to achieve this. If he fails, Katzir can ask another party leader to attempt it. In all, coalition attempts can continue up to 119 days under the law. In the next few days election returns from the army and merchant seamen will become known. There is no likelihood that they will change the Knesset line up of seats.
KNESSET – 1977, KNESSET – 1973
Likud – 41, 39
Labor – 33, 51
DMC – 14, 0
NRP – 12, 10
Rakah – 6, 4
Agudat – 4,
Poalei Agudat – 1, 5
Sheli – 2, 0
Shlomzion – 2, 0
ILP – 1, 4
CR – 1, 3
Labor-affiliated Arab list – 1, 3
Flatto-Sharon – 2, 0
The DMC (Democratic Movement for Change) was a new party founded late last year by Prof. Yigal Yadin and originally known as the Democratic Movement. Later, it merged with Shinui (Change) movement headed by Amnon Rubinstein and subsequently joined by Shmuel Tamir’s Free Center. Agudath Israel and Poalei Agudath Israel ran together in 1973 but split up for this election.
Sheli was also a new party this year. It represented a merger of the leftist Moked, which had one seat in the outgoing Knesset, the Independent Socialist Movement founded by Arye Eliav, which had two seats, a splinter group of the Black Panthers and Uri Avneri’s Haolam Hazeh movement. Flatto-Sharon was formed by millionaire businessman Samuel Flatto-Sharon who ran on a one-man ticket but garnered enough votes to obtain two seats. The votes for the second seat will not be credited to him but will be split up among the other parties in a complicated system of sharing votes.
Among the Labor Knesseters and aspirants who didn’t make it are: Yosef Tekoah, former United Nations Ambassador; Esther Herlitz (former Ambassador to Norway); Yehiel Leket (former chief aliya shaliach in the U.S.); and Dov Zakin, the colorful Mapam leader. Others who ran but who didn’t make it were: Rabbi Meir Kahane; Mordechai Ben-Porat; Shalom Cohen (former Panther leader); Yehoshua Peretz (Ashdod labor leader); and two Arab lists–Coexistence With Justice and the Arab Reform Movement.
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