Kadima's ideal election team

NECHEMIA MEYERS

With their new Kadima party, Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert were given an opportunity never before granted to Israeli politicians. Like some latter-day Santa Claus, but without the reindeer, they went around distributing Knesset nominations not only to veteran politicians, but also to their friends, the friends of their friends and a group of worthy Israelis who previously had shown little or no interest in a political career.

The candidates are an impressive group by any standard. The first 35 on the Kadima list, all of whom are likely to become Knesset members, include no less than than five professors and several other academics. They are experts in subjects ranging from medical administration, space research and the treatment of stress, to strategic planning, higher education and economics.

Other candidates lack advanced degrees but not accomplishments. For example, there is Shai Hermesh, the resident of a kibbutz near the Gaza Strip and the treasurer of the Jewish Agency. "Of course," Hermesh admitted, "people on the Kadima list don't agree on all issues, but we all accept the fact that the Israeli political scene has changed; that most right-wingers have given up the idea that we can hold on to all the land of Israel and that most left-wingers no longer believe that peace now is an immediate prospect. So whatever our views on territorial compromise, religious issues or other matters, we feel that the time has come for a moderate centre party to take over."

When Sharon and Olmert were looking for suitable candidates, they considered not only degrees and ideology, but also such mundane matters as sex and ethnic background. So a quarter of the Kadima candidates likely to be elected are women, a much higher percentage than in other major parties – and some 20 per cent are from the former Soviet Union. Only Arabs, for some reason, have been overlooked.

Is this the way, in any case, that a list of candidates should be drawn up? Prof. Raphael Cohen-Almagor, director of the Centre for Democratic Studies at the University of Haifa, thinks not.

"Such a method is not democratic," he said. "Sharon and Olmert, no matter how talented and devoted, aren't a substitute for the

collective wisdom of a party. Moreover, a good professor is not necessarily an effective politician. The skills required to advance legislation, to mobilize support for it in the Knesset and elsewhere, are not the same skills as those required to do good research. These academics, however well intentioned, may soon feel frustrated by the need to become wheeler-dealers in the political arena."

What Cohen-Almagor would like to see is a system that would allow more candidates with limited funds to compete for places on Knesset lists, an exercise which demands a considerable financial investment.

The shortcomings of the present system were particularly evident last week with the detention by the police of several members of the Gavrieli family in connection with illegal gambling and tax evasion. Inbal Gavrieli, whose father and uncle were among those arrested, is in the outgoing Knesset solely by virtue of the fact that her family mounted an extremely expensive campaign to get her chosen as a Likud candidate.

The Likud didn't choose her a second time and she won't be in the next Knesset. Perhaps her seat will be occupied by a professor from Kadima.

Nechemia Meyers is a freelance writer living in Rehovot, Israel.

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