Michal Shamir - The Elections in Israel 2003

Table I.1
Results of the 2003 Knesset Elections

On February 6, 2001, Ariel Sharon defeated Ehud Barak in the last election held under the direct election of the Prime Minister system. He put together a broad national unity government, which allowed him to stay in power for nearly two years, despite frequent coalition crises and constant threats and actual desertions of the Ihud Leumi, Am Ehad, Shas, Gesher and Labor. When the Labor ministers headed by Fuad Ben-Eliezer resigned over the budget on October 30, 2002, Sharon enlisted Benjamin Netanyahu and former chief of staff Shaul Mofaz to join his government. On November 5, Sharon went to the president, Moshe Katzav, notifying him that under the current conditions in the Knesset, the government could not continue its term, and asked him to dissolve the Knesset and announce early elections according to Article 22 of the Basic Law: The Government. Within days January 28, 2003 was set as the election date, and the short and intense campaign began. On November 19, Amram Mitzna, then mayor of Haifa, was elected in the Labor primaries to head its list, obtaining 54 percent of support over Ben-Eliezers 38 percent and Ramons 7 percent. On November 28, Ariel Sharon beat Netanyahu by 56 percent to 40 percent (a third candidateFeiglin, obtained 3.5 percent) in the Likud primaries. Within a few weeks the politicians compiled their party lists. Labors primaries were held on December 9. However, public interest was focused on the Likud central party and the list of candidates that it selected. Charges of bribes, votes for sale, and involvement of activists with criminal records in the Likud party list selection process surfaced, and Prime Minister Sharon hastened to fire deputy minister Naomi Blumental, who refused to cooperate with the police investigation. Corruption scandals continued to plague the public agenda during the election campaign, with Labor party candidates accused of wrongdoing as well, and Prime Minister Sharon personally implicated. While these developments seemed to hurt the Likud in the polls for a short while in early January, the Likud soon appeared to have recovered. In our pre-election survey, more voters regarded the Likud as more corrupt than Labor; however, a majority of voters saw both as corrupt. Except for voters for the Left, majorities in all other groups saw both parties as corrupt, and did not list corruption as an important consideration in their vote. Corruption, while prominent in the news and in the public mind, did not seem to have much actual impact on the vote. In this volume, Hofnung discusses the issues of election financing and their corrupting effects in the 2003 elections from a broad, structural perspective, and also provides recommendations for a better incentive structure that takes into account the constraints and opportunities of the electoral race.