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ernment were electorally inter-
twined. Elections were held only
for the Knesset, not for the exec-
utive branch. After the vote, the
leader of the largest party was
called upon to form a parliamen-
tary coalition, if necessary (and it
has always been necessary in Is-
rael), as a prerequisite for form-
ing a government. Unlike the
presidential system, in which the
executive and legislative branch-
es are elected separately and can-
not dissolve one another, Israel's
government ruled by the will of
its parliament and could be
brought down, at any time, by a
no-confidence vote in the Knesset.
In the new system, as Profes-
sor Hazan explains it, the two
branches of government will be
elected separately, each gaining
its mandate directly from the pub-
lic. Nevertheless, each will have
the power to do the other one in.
"Even though he is chosen by
a direct vote, the prime minister
will have to receive the confidence
of the Knesset, as well," Professor
Hazan explains. "Thus parlia-
ment can disregard the will of the
people either by failing to vote its
confidence in the new govern-
ment, right after the election, or
by ousting the prime minister, by
majority of 61 votes, at any time
thereafter."
The prime minister has the
counter-power to dissolve the
Knesset simply by resigning.
`That's how MAD would work un-
der the new system: the Knesset
can oust the prime minister, and
the prime minister can dissolve
the Knesset," Professor Hazan
says. "It's a balance of terror that
could work nicely in a country
that isn't sorely divided and po-
larized. But Israel doesn't fit that
bill."
Suppose the voters decide they
prefer Shimon Peres as prime
minister but want to "rein him in"
by giving the right a majority in
the Knesset," Professor Hazan
continues. "We may end up with
two opposing poles of legitima-
cy, each claiming to have the man-
date of the people."
This doomsday forecast is no
more improbable than the elec-
tion of a Democratic president and
a Republican Congress. The April
26 Dahaf survey, for example,
showed Mr. Peres leading Ben-
jamin Netanyahu by 49 percent
to 44 percent in the race for prime
minister. But it also showed the
combination of Labor, Meretz, and
the Arab parties running neck
and neck with the likeliest mem-
bers of a right-wing coalition —
the expanded Likud, Shas,
Moledet, and the National Reli-
gious Party— with each bloc com-
manding 56 seats.
The eight deciding Knesset
seats are divided among the Or-
thodox Torah Judaism Party, the
Third Way, and Natan Sharan-
sky's new immigrant party, Yis-
rael Ba-Aliyah. All three of these
small parties could go either way
4
rul. vi- r.7
after the election, and can there-
fore demand a high price for their
support.
This is perhaps the greatest
irony of the new system of "parli-
dentialism," as Tel Aviv Univer-
sity Law Professor Uriel
Reichman, one of the movers and
shakers of electoral reform, has
dubbed it. The change was
spawned in 1990 by active public
discontent with the parliamen-
tary system, which seemed to ac-
cord the small (usually religious)
parties an exaggerated degree of
power.
"What the new system has
done is shift the 'market' of coali-
tion bargaining," Professor Re-
ichman argues. "Now it's the
prime minister's market. The
small parties can either join his
government or remain in opposi-
tion, but they can no longer decide
who the prime minister will be."
Other experts feel that assess-
ment dodges the real issue. 'The
impetus behind electoral reform
was to clean the stables," notes
Professor Peter Medding of the
Hebrew University's Department
of Political Science. "But rather
than be reduced, the extortionary
powers of the small parties have
actually grown. Now there are
two rounds of bargaining: before
the elections, to obtain backing for
one or another of the prime min-
isterial candidates and after them,
to form a government."
Evidence of the first, pre-elec-
tion round of culling favor with
the small parties has already been
evident in the "pilgrimages" both
Mr. Peres and Mr. Netanyahu
made to Shas mentor Rabbi Ova-
diah Yosef and in their appear-
ances before a conclave of the
Torah Judaism Party, in which
both promised to build ample
amounts of government-subsi-
dized housing for the Orthodox
community. One can only guess
at what else was promised to
these parties behind closed doors.
All of which raises the question
of whether electoral reform was
necessary in the first place. 'The
old system wasn't at fault," argues
Professor Hazan. 'The Israeli vot-
er was for creating two large par-
ties with a difference of only one
Knesset seat between them [in
the three elections between 1981
and 1988]. That's what accorded
the smaller parties so much pow-
er."
Professor Hazan also criticizes
the authors of the new law for bas-
ing their reform on "the rosy out-
look that it will work." On the
contrary, he holds, "the quality of
reform must be judged on the ba-
sis of its worst-case scenario, and
in this instance the results can be
disastrous."
But if disaster strikes, it won't
necessarily be soon. Professor
Hazan and the other experts be-
lieve that whoever wins the race
for prime minister will have a fair-
ly good chance of forming a gov-
ernment. ❑