Rahamim Kalanter was a member of the Jerusalem city council. In August 1956, in exchange for being appointed deputy mayor, he left his party to prevent it from voting out the mayor, Gershon Agron, who supported building a public swimming pool that would be open to men and women at the same time, and a Reform synagogue in the city. This act gave rise to the insult "Kalanterism" to describe an elected official who acts against his voters' intentions in order to gain political benefits. Israeli governments stand on three legs -- democratic, parliamentary, and representative. Kalanterism operates in total opposition to the representativeness to which an elected official is obligated. A democratic regime draws its power from the fact that a majority of the public feels that political power is shared in a way that represents a variety of opinions based on the relative support each has. To make Kalanterism a little harder, the Basic Law: the Knesset (Clause 6a) was amended to declare that Knesset members who leave their parties and join a new one are not allowed to stand for election on their new party's list unless they resign their Knesset seat, in which case their former party can preserve its parliamentary strength and continue to represent the will of its voters. While this amendment forced Shimon Peres, Dalia Itzik, Haim Ramon, Tzachi Hanegbi and Michael Nudelman to resign from the Knesset so they could run on the Kadima list in the elections for the 17th Knesset, it did not prevent Kadima from splitting from the Likud. In doing so, Kadima broke faith with the Likud voters and took mandates that were supposed to represent these voters, all to pave the way for their political rivals on the Left. The result of this betrayal of the voters -- an act committed by former prime ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert, former ministers Avraham Hirschson, Tzipi Livni and Shaul Mofaz, and others -- was that a huge sector of the nation lost faith in the need for democratic rule because they felt, rightfully, cheated by those who were supposed to represent them. With elections on the way, the political arena is engulfed in a storm of super-sophisticated Kalanterism. Some of those who want to be re-elected are changing their skins and making them match a new political home for the sake of some political gain. The master of Kalanterism was the late Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who was backed by Olmert, Livni and Mofaz. But Livni one-upped him in cynicism in the last elections when she first embraced Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu so he would make her a senior minister, and even more now, when she wrung a rotating prime ministership and guaranteed places out of the determined Labor Party Chairman Isaac Herzog. It's doubtful that Livni and Hatnuah would make it into the Knesset on their own. The farce we saw this week starring former Shas Chairman Eli Yishai is taking place on the same fertile ground. Yishai was ousted as head of the party by the late Rabbi Ovadia Yosef but refuses to acknowledge it. Despite the fact that a convicted criminal doesn't deserve to hold public office, and Ariyeh Deri has been made Shas chairman, it's unacceptable that moments before the elections Yishai is seeking a new home in exchange for payment, after the elections, in the form of a seat in the Knesset plenum or at the cabinet table.
