Thursday February 12, 2009

I'm Predicting:

After an election the president of Israel has one task:
To interview the parties and charge a party with the responsibility of building a coalition consisting of over 60 members for the purpose of creating a government.

The job of the president is mostly ceremonial, but this one responsibility is enormous:
It is up to the president to decide which party leader has the best chance of success at cobbling together a group that can govern.

Following this election there are only two possibilities:
Likud under Netanyahu or Kadima under Livni.
Everyone already knows that the right block will have more Knesset seats than the left, but despite that fact, right now, the jury is still out.

Here is the dilemma:
How many parties on the right are actually center leaning and willing to move over and how many parties on the right are actually right and want to stay there.

Shas is not a right party, they are a social party interested in social services for their constituency. They have several issues that put them to the right but others that have them on the left. Shas can go both ways.

Lieberman, of Yisrael Beitaynu, has already shown that he can be in a coalition with Kadima, he has done it not once but twice. The flip side is that Lieberman and Netanyahu despise one another, even though Lieberman came of political age under Netanyahu's tutelage.

Netanyahu and Likud have much to gain by trying to set up the coalition, but Netanyahu is as disliked by as many members of his own party as he is by members of other parties and a lot of coalition cobbling boils down to personalities.

The president will take this all under consideration.
Sometime soon President Peres will make his decision.
Until the final moment, much like the election, everything will remain up in the air.

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