According to reports in various Israeli media channels, Prime Minister Netanyahu has expressed a desire to prepare legislation that would allow the public to directly elect a Prime Minister in order to prevent the third round of Knesset elections to be held in less than 12 months.
“If you claim that the public knows me and that they are tired of me, let’s go to direct selection. I think the issue of direct elections is starting to become interesting,” Netanyahu said.
Netanyahu also discussed why he feels that it is imperative that he should remain the Prime Minister for at least six months should a unity government be formed. “They claimed they did not want to sit under a prime minister with an indictment. We said it would be for six months, but it was not accepted. This was to advance the defense alliance before we would enter the twilight period of the US elections, I said it was important that I stay for six months.”
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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2 Responses
They tried that. One ends with a Prime Minister who doesn’t have the support of the Knesset. In a Presidential system with checks and balances it works out fine, but Israel has a figure-head president (modeled on the British king) which only functions if there is a Prime Minister in control of Parliament.
They tried it, but they found that it boosted the smaller parties at the expense of the larger ones, so they dropped it. The reason was that some people who really support a smaller party are induced to vote for a major party because they want that party’s leader to be prime minister, and they don’t trust their preferred party to support him. Given the chance to elect the prime minister separately people did so, and then voted for their true preferred party for the Knesset, leading to a major slide in the seats the majors got. They couldn’t have that, so they scrapped the direct elections.