The fact that Likud-Yisrael Beytenu negotiators have had a hard time convincing other parties to join the coalition has had many pine for the now-defunct Direct Election Law. When that law was in effect [as an amendment to the Basic Law: Government], there was no doubt as to whom the prime minister-elect was. Having been directly elected by the people, that person had much more legitimacy and political clout than the current leader of a 31-member faction who has been struggling to form a coalition [Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu]. Don't get me wrong, the Direct Election Law had some flaws too. It was not perfect. Its language should have incorporated many major reforms to the electoral process (e.g. raising the share of the vote a party has to win in order to qualify for Knesset representation; electing half of the Knesset members by district rather than by nation-wide ballot, and so forth). But for all of its shortcomings, the bifurcated vote where one chooses a prime minister and a Knesset list through two separate ballots gave the prime minister much more strength and cemented his legitimacy in the eyes of the other parties, his fellow faction members and the general public. The direct election mechanism was designed to bolster the office of the prime minister. That is why under the Direct Election Law the prime minister-elect did not have to ask the president for a 28-day period to assemble a coalition, nor did he or she have to ask him for the 14-day extension [as must be done today]. Under the direct election system, every Israeli citizen knew who their next prime minister was immediately after the official election results had been certified. There was no disagreement on that. This clarity had a psychological effect that allowed the prime minister-elect to wield much more strength in the coalition talks; it redefined how he or she could conduct themselves vis-à-vis other parties. Had such a law been in place today, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would have been more than just an MK who had been tapped by the president to head the government; he would have been able to exert much more pressure on Yesh Atid's Yair Lapid and Habayit Hayehudi's Naftali Bennett, as well as on Shas' co-chairman MK Aryeh Deri and Labor Chairwoman MK Shelly Yachimovich. A whole new ballgame. Of course, one could posit that even if Netanyahu had been elected through direct elections by two million people, Bennett and Lapid could have set stringent conditions for their entry into the coalition. But under the direct election system, Netanyahu would have either had to form a government within 45 days or, if he failed to do so, face new elections sixty days after that period lapsed. As only prime ministerial candidates would be on the ballot in these special elections, the Knesset make up would remain unchanged. Those who opposed the Direct Election Law predicted that its nullification would make small parties disappear in favor of a handful of big factions, citing the fact that voters would not be able to cast two separate ballots [and thus choose to optimize their vote by selecting one of the big parties that could lead a coalition]. But these detractors (who were led by former Cabinet Minister Yossi Beilin, current Energy and Water Resources Minister Uzi Landau and Prof. Arye (Arik) Carmon, the president of The Israel Democracy Institute) were ultimately proven wrong: even today, more than ten years after former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon abolished the Direct Election Law immediately after taking office, the size of the large parties pales in comparison to the 47 and 48 seats the Likud and The Alignment [a faction comprising Labor and another party] once had.
