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Ben-Eliezer Elected Chairman of Israel's Labor Party
TEL AVIV, Dec. 27 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer defeated Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg Wednesday to become the Labor Party's eighth chairman, filling the office vacated by Ehud Barak more than 10 months ago.
Ben-Eliezer won nearly 90 percent of the vote in a recount, 2,585 to 324, according to unofficial results. When the numbers from the initial September 4 primary are included, Ben-Eliezer defeated Burg by 31,992 to 30,203.
Some 27 percent of 12,647 eligible voters participated in the recount. Less than one percent of Druze voters and 10 percent of Arabs cast ballots, protesting allegations of mass forgeries in the initial September 4 primary. In several Druze villages voter turnout was in the single digits.
Ben-Eliezer vowed to unify the party, reaching out to the Druze and Arabs, supporters of Burg, and Knesset members who endorsed neither candidate, like Haim Ramon, Ophir Pines-Paz, and Shlomo Ben-Ami. Ben-Eliezer invited Burg to take a leadership role in the party.
"There are no more camps, and there are no more disputes in this party," Ben-Eliezer said to cheering supporters in orange T-shirts. "We will now be one family and one party."
Ben-Eliezer told Ha'aretz Wednesday he is planning "dramatic changes in the distribution of responsibility in the party," including establishing a professional-political team that will prepare recommendations for its reorganization.
Burg, who stayed in his office much of the day, making no attempt at campaigning, called Ben-Eliezer last night, conceded defeat, and wished him luck in rehabilitating the party.
"This election is a farce, and the results were known in advance," Burg told his campaign staff. "I have no doubt that there will be better days, future struggles, and even victories, because the truth must win at the end. All these elections have lost their legitimacy, we need to thank God that it's over tomorrow."
Burg has already begun preparing for the next Labor election, tentatively scheduled for next November. The winner of that race will be Labor's candidate for prime minister.
Earlier in the evening, Burg directed his lawyers to prevent the party from declaring a winner, because of new incidents of forgeries in 11 of the 41 polling stations involved in the recount, but Burg later relented and permitted the results to be announced.
The newly elected chairman will begin his first day on the job by visiting the Wailing Wall and the grave of former prime minister and Labor leader, Yitzhak Rabin.
He was address the Labor Party central committee Thursday night, at the Beit Berl Teachers College near Kfar Saba, to debate whether to support approval of the 2002 budget.
Ben-Eliezer intends to meet with Foreign Minister Shimon Peres to clarify his future. He is expected to convene the party's ministerial forum to officially take Peres's role as the minister representing the party in crucial government decisions, but will likely find a way to pacify Peres.
"I intend to maintain Shimon Peres's place in the party, and will not do anything to detract from his stature," Ben-Eliezer told reporters outside a polling station in Ganei Tal.
Sources in Ben-Eliezer's campaign said that Labor secretary-general Ra'anan Cohen's days as party chairman may be numbered. They said he might offer the position to Pines-Paz, whose popularity is growing, according to Ben-Eliezer's polls.
Cohen said he is not afraid of losing his position, and that in order to fire him Ben-Eliezer would have to go through proper party procedures.
Pines-Paz is unlikely to take up Ben-Eliezer's offer, because he favors removing Labor from hardline Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's national-unity government. Ben-Eliezer will now be in charge of deciding how long the party will remain in the government.
Ben-Eliezer became the first Sephardi leader of the predominately Ashkenazi party, but said his ethnicity is insignificant.
"Until they told me yesterday [about being the first Sephardi chairman], I thought I was Israeli in every way," Ben-Eliezer said outside a Druze polling station. "The fact I was born in Iraq you can't take from me, nor can you take away that my given name is Fuad."
Ben-Eliezer won six votes to one in Druze Knesset Sallah Tarif's town, Julis, where pollsters reported that women wearing Afghan-style burkhas came to vote, but refused to identify themselves, because of "family honor."
Ben-Eliezer is already hard at work on plans to reorganize Labor's institutions. "I'm as full of plans as a pomegranate," he said. "I know what I want to change in the party's organization and its ideology. I intend to take my new position very seriously," he said.
One of Ben-Eliezer's first steps may be a motion to cancel primaries for electing party members to the Knesset. Sources close to the defense minister said he is considering transferring the electoral procedure from a forum of the party's 150,000 members to a restricted group of 6,000-7,000 members, so that he will be able to have more control over the next round of elections for the Knesset members list.
"If Knesset member candidates, including the current MKs and ministers, know that Ben-Eliezer has great influence over whether or not they will be elected for the next term, they will behave themselves," said sources.
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