Tel-Chai Nation

One thing that may be certain about this upcoming election in Israel: if there's anyone who's going to come out the loser in the race, it looks like Labor will be it.

Surprisingly enough, that's what looks to be the result, that the party of David Ben-Gurion may be on its way to becoming just a mere blip on the radar after this election. They've really stumbled badly ever since Ehud Barak reneged on his agreement to topple the government due to Ehud Olmert's refusal to step down following the corruption charges against him, and now, things are really looking gloomy. In the Jerusalem Post, they say:

Under the shadow of a new poll predicting that the party will win only six seats in the February 10 national elections, almost 60,000 Labor Party members were lining up to vote in Tuesday's primary.

Note: the primaries have been posponed until Thursday, because of an alleged crash in the computer program they wanted to use for voting.

According to a poll published on Monday and conducted by 'Panels Ltd.' for Channel 2, were elections held today, Labor, headed by Defense Minister Ehud Barak, would crash to only six Knesset seat. Labor won 19 seats in the last election.

[...]

Nevertheless, Labor officials were trying to stay positive, and on Monday senior MKs said they were hoping for the best despite the fact that this primary campaign has been characterized by no more than 70-80 supporters at each members' rally.

Six seats, you say? Now that's pretty low for a party that once was able to get at least 40 in many past elections. But that seems to be the case now: they're left with nothing left to sell to the public, not even leftism, which seems to be the only thing they've been good at in the past decade.

Yes, things do look gloomy for the Labor party, which is, perhaps ironically, losing seats to Kadima and Meretz, to name but some other political parties.

Update: here's an op-ed Ynet wrote at least a week ago.

Labels: Israel, political corruption