Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak is expected to announce Sunday he is quitting the Labor party’s primaries race. Barak is expected to call on other candidates to do the same and unite behind party chairman Shimon Peres.
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| Barak: Labor should unite around Peres / Attila Somfalvi |
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Former prime minister says party would be strongest if it united behind one man, offers to drop out of race; Netanyahu must not be prime minister, Barak says |
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Barak has led for several months now a struggle against the party’s recruitment drive, charging that thousands joined Labor because of pressures exerted on them by Knesset Member Amir Peretz.
Meanwhile, Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer says thousands of Arab names were erased from the party list in an attempt to eliminate him. However, Labor officials estimate that the Central Committee will approve the voters list, which has the backing of Peres and leadership candidate Matan Vilnai.
“We will continue the struggle for cleaning up the recruitment drive and we won’t let up,” a source close to Barak said. “The recruitment drive is immoral.”
Once the voters list is approved, as expected, the Central Committee will be set to decide on the primaries date. The date proposed by party General Secretary Eitan Cabel is November 8, while Amir Peretz prefers October 11. Peres, meanwhile, supports Cabel’s position.
Two weeks ago, Barak already called on all candidates to withdraw from the primaries race and unite around Peres. However, aside from Barak, none of the other three candidates, Ben-Eliezer, Vilnai, and Peretz, supported the move.
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