Suddenly, without our really feeling it, the primary elections system, which selects candidates for each party's Knesset list, is breaking down. We are reading about candidates for Yair Lapid's new Yesh Atid (There Is a Future) party, whose place on the list depends on the party's leader. The same holds true in Yisrael Beiteynu and of course in Shas, where the rabbi has always decided the candidates. Likud, Labor and Meretz still hold primary elections among their members and elected officials. Instead of doing so proudly, however, they apologize for preserving tradition over a return of steering committees. The primaries system has lost some of its public advantages following revelations of deals and shady practices, as well as candidates' massive expenditures. But the primaries method came into being as a revolution against the old method of party leaders choosing their candidates. In Mapai (the socialist Zionist party established in 1930 that preceded today's Labor party), a candidate had no chance of being included on the list if he or she had annoyed Golda Meir; in Herut (the right-wing party established in 1948 that formed the core of the Likud in 1973), no one could dream of a place on the list without Menachem Begin's blessing. The steering committee system was wrought with intellectual conformism and a lack of willingness to take risks. While assembling the candidate list for the 1969 elections, Shulamit Aloni was put at the bottom of the list. In the previous Knesset, she had been one of the most active and energetic voices for the rule of law and civil rights, but her nonconformism in the plenary ended up pushing her off the bench. The Herut movement, part of today's Likud, was the first to kick the steering committee method. Before the 1981 elections, I remember the Labor partys steering committee, headed by Shimon Peres, assembling its Knesset list, . At the same time, democracy seemed to be at its best in the Herut movement, which was choosing its list democratically, giving each candidate had an opportunity to present him- or herself publicly to members of the party, rather than fight for a position in front of a "prestigious" steering committee with its own rules. At the end of 1984, I was elected to serve as secretary-general of the Labor party. Together with a few other members, we gathered member support for the primaries method. We held national and regional elections for the party's committee; my replacement, Michael Harish, continued with the practice of holding party primaries for all members. Members of the Labor party felt that they were all part of the assembly process, and consequently, elected officials were held more accountable. In 1996, the Labor party boasted about 300,000 voting members; in 1999, less than 200,000. Suich a large group is less exposed to wheeling and dealing, and the role of the public in selecting its politicians is realized in such a wide forum. Today, political slogans have conquered the realm of democratic consciousness. The media legitimizes the steering committee system, but it is a regression of the democratic vision and gives party leaders the right to set their own priorities, without involving the broader public through the act of elections. Perhaps in the short term, the steering committee process is more reasonable, given the entry of "good people" into new parties. But as time passes, the magic will expire. Lapid's new political movement, for example, will wither from a lack of activists to participate in its grand efforts to foment change. I respect people such as Stav Shafir and Omer Bar-Lev, young leaders of the social protest movement, and Vice Prime Minister Moshe (Bogie) Ya'alon in the past, who joined parties despite having no assurance of placement on the list. They chose to fight for their place. Organized democracy demands a system of strong parties to hold open, broad elections to select their candidates.
