Benjamin Netanyahu's long reign of twelve years is finally coming to an end

 

Benjamin Netanyahu's long reign of twelve years is finally coming to an end


Benjamin Netanyahu's long reign of twelve years is finally coming to an end


Israel holds national elections every four years. The system of government in Israel is the Parliamentary System of Government. That is, all power is in the hands of the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister can participate in the elections as many times as he wants. Participation in more than two elections is constitutionally prohibited in many countries around the world, including the United States. But Israel has no such rules. You can participate in the election as many times as you want. In political science, we call this term-length of participation in elections "Renewable Indefinitely".


The name of the Israeli parliament is Knesset. The total number of seats in Parliament is 120. So to become the Prime Minister, you have to get a total of 71 seats. In the 62-year history of the country, no single party has ever been able to form a government with 61 seats out of a total of 120 seats in Parliament. So the rule is that if you do not get 61 seats alone, then the two or three parties participating in the election can come together and come to power by securing a total of 61 seats. It is stated in the Israeli constitution. Which we call an alliance or a coalition government in political science.


Let me make it a little easier with an example. Suppose A party got 40 seats, B party got 12 seats, C party got 9 seats. Now when these three parties (A, BC) come together, it becomes 71 seats. So these three parties can form a coalition government together.


It would seem that it is very easy to form a coalition government. But the matter is not so simple. There are more than 13 active political parties in Israel. The ideology of each political party is different and the ideology of one party is in conflict with the ideology of the other party. You can understand by giving an example. The party called Yes Atid believes that there should be two independent states called Israel-Palestine but the political party called Yamina believes that there can be no state called Palestine, there will be only one state - Israel.


As a result, it is very difficult and rare for two or three parties to form a coalition government. And it is often difficult for three or four parties to stay together for four years after forming a coalition government. The reason is that the alliance broke up after one or two years of its formation. As a result, the Israeli election commission had to hold elections before the election. Because of this, there have been four elections in Israel in less than two years.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his main rival Benny Gantz formed the coalition government in May last year after three rounds of elections. The conditions for the formation of that alliance were that Netanyahu would be the Prime Minister for the first two years and Gantz would be the Prime Minister for the remaining two years. However, in December last year, there was an extreme conflict between the two parties over the budget issue and Gantz broke the alliance. The date of the new election was announced.


Then on March 23, the election was held for the fourth time. No party got 61 seats there either. Netanyahu's Likud party won a maximum of 30 seats. So Netanyahu was given time to form a coalition government. Yesh Lapid, leader of the second-largest party, Yesh Lapid, who won the second-largest seat after Netanyahu failed to form an alliance within the allotted time, was ordered to form a government within 28 days.


Today's Al Jazeera news item shows that Yes Atid has managed to secure 71 seats in order to come to power by forming an alliance with other parties, excluding Netanyahu. So Benjamin Netanyahu, who has ruled for 12 long years, has to lose the post of Prime Minister. Netanyahu has been in power for the longest time in Israeli history. Since the coalition government, there will be two new prime ministers. One is Yes Atid party leader Yar Lapid and the other is Yamina party leader Naftali Bennett. Ear Lapid will be prime minister for the first two years and Naftali Bennett for the next two years.


There is no ideological similarity between Ear Lapid and Naftali Bennett. One claims to be a center-left secular. He said the Palestinians should have an independent state. The other is a religious extremist. According to him, Israel should occupy most of the occupied West Bank. But one thing they have united on is that Netanyahu's rule must end anyway.


Israel's electoral system is different from all other countries in the world. We usually vote for the person (candidate) standing in different seats in the election. But Israelis vote directly for the party, not for any individual. However, like other countries, there are proportional representatives. The team has an open list and a close list. These lists state who will be represented in which region. The names of the open list representatives are announced before the election but only the party members know the names of those on the close list. This system exists not only in Israel but also in many countries including Turkey.


Now the question may be, there are many political parties in Peru, the country of the Inca Empire. Why is there no problem? You know, there are about 10/12 active parties in Peru, so no party gets more than 13% of the vote, so Peru has the second round of voting. In political science, we call it "Runoff Voting" or "Ballotage" and in some countries, it is also called "Two Round System".


Then out of all the candidates of these 10/12 parties, the two candidates who got the most votes were re-elected. Thus the president is elected through the second round of voting. Such Runoff Voting took place in France in 2002, in addition to Peru. This system is also used in the election of senators in the Czech Republic and in the parliament of Iran.


This time there may be another question, there are many political parties in Canada like brother Israel. Canada, like Israel, does not have a Runoff Voting system. So why not form a government in Canada? The answer is that there are not many policy differences between Canadian political parties. So it is relatively easy in Canada to form a coalition after the election.


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