Thoughts on the elections
, עודכן
1. Israeli governments last, on average, two years: The next Knesset, the 34th government, will be sworn in shortly after the country's 67th Independence Day. In a reality like this, governing is difficult, to say the least. Not a thing can be planned for the long term. Legislative processes, large projects, and attempts to "change priorities" in any field all take time, and when elections are held every two years, everything comes to a halt.
Governments fall because the old-guard parties don't garner enough mandates to secure their ruling position. So the big parties are forced to put together coalitions that are at best inconvenient and not infrequently impossible. The key to this lies in the low electoral threshold (even after it was raised, it stands at only 3.25 percent), which allows factions with only a few mandates to take their place in the Knesset. The threshold must be raised significantly to leave the system with only a few parties that each represents one of the following: The Right, the Left, the ultra-Orthodox, and the Arabs. All the rest can join them. This isn't an attack on democracy: Longer-standing and more experienced democracies than ours function wonderfully with many fewer parties in their parliaments. Will it hurt the representation of small groups? Not really. Does anyone know what small group Kadima, with its two mandates, represents?
2. Election day is a holiday that brings the economy to a halt and costs hundreds of millions of shekels. And the citizens do make a choice: whether to go shopping, to the beach, or to have a cookout in the park (complaining about the government while fanning the coals.) But they no longer necessarily elect to go vote. This is a double loss for Israeli democracy, economic and democratic. The right to vote is a civil obligation, and voting should be made obligatory by law. You don't believe in the system of government? Put in a blank ballot, put two different ballots in the envelope (rendering the vote invalid), vote for the Pensioners Party -- but vote. Will making voting obligatory hurt the freedom of choice of the individual? Absolutely not, since voting is the ultimate act of democracy. And even if voting becomes obligatory, we can do away with the holiday. Celebrate democracy, and go to work. By doing so we solve two problems: the low voter turnout and the blow to the economy. In some democratic nations, like Australia, the law requires citizens to vote.
3. In the age of social media, TV campaign ads are superfluous. In the last elections, the campaign ads were of interest only to fans of the genre. The ads cost the taxpayers millions and bring in minimal ratings. Clips shown on Facebook and Twitter get more exposure anyway, and the most successful ones find their way into the news broadcasts, news websites, and newspapers.
4. To add to the previous section, an observation about "new politics" -- guys, there's no such thing as "new politics." There's only one politics, then and now, now and forever. It includes intrigues, backstabbing, deals, vested interests, and kissing babies. Using Facebook doesn't turn someone into a "new kind of politician."
Ariel Schmidberg is head of the Israel Hayom News Department.
