An emotional win for Reuven Rivlin
Analysis: MKs were not attracted by Rivlin the winner; they were moved by Rivlin the loser, the underdog.
Reuven (Rubi) Rivlin won the presidency on Tuesday thanks to emotion. No one is indifferent towards him at the Knesset: He has many lovers and quite a few haters. Meir Sheetrit, on the other hand, enjoys general affection, but no one will move mountains for him.
And so on Tuesday we witnessed a remarkable political drama. Rivlin entered the first round of voting as the certain winner. He ended up with 44 votes versus 31 votes for Sheetrit.
The momentum belonged to Sheetrit: Everyone assumed that the centrist and leftists Knesset members who voted for Dalia Itzik, Dalia Dorner and Dan Shechtman in the first round would see Sheetrit as a candidate whose political views match theirs. The opposition would want to demonstrate its power against the Likud candidate, and the members of Yair Lapid's Yesh Atid faction, whose legs are in the government while their hearts are outside, would gladly join them.
That didn't happen. There are several explanations for that, but the most heartwarming one is the human explanation. The Knesset members were not attracted by Rivlin the winner. They were moved by Rivlin the loser, the underdog. MK Itzik Shmuli of the Labor Party admitted it openly. In the first round he did as most of his faction members did, and voted for Sheetrit. When he went in to vote for the second time, he saw Rivlin's face and changed his vote.
Rivlin gained this emotional solidarity through a series of decisions he made as Knesset speaker, which curbed attempts to trample the opposition, thwarted anti-democratic legislation and maintained the Knesset's power against the government, and in years of boring work at the Knesset's Finance Committee, while cooperating with colleagues and helping new members, from all factions and parties.
Rivlin's haters say it was all planned: He watched over democracy and worked with rivals just so that one day they would elect him president. They are missing the main point – the heart. Rivlin's heart is located on the right side. In the role of president, that's a significant quality.
Meir Sheetrit, on the other hand, was the race's big surprise. Everyone assumed that he would come in third, that he would not receive more than the six votes of members of his party, Hatnua, and one vote from his brother-in-law, Minister Meir Cohen of Yesh Atid. But Minister Amir Peretz worked for him, and Peretz knows how to work.
The dramatic change took place after Binyamin (Fouad) Ben-Eliezer quit the race. Fouad estimated that Sheetrit would get 33 votes, and that's almost what he got. He received cross-party support. It was reasonable to believe that he would now win the votes of members of the ultra-Orthodox Sephardic Shas party as well – both because of his Moroccan descent and because of the close relationship between his party leader, Tzipi Livni, and Shas Chairman Aryeh Deri. That didn't happen.
It all began at a ceremony in honor of the wedding of Deri's daughter, on Monday. The presidential candidates were not invited, but everyone else was, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Opposition Chairman Isaac (Buji) Herzog. Deri gave a speech about the honor of the Torah, and Sara Netanyahu applauded. Shas MK Ariel Atias teased PM Netanyahu for publicly endorsing Rivlin but planning to vote differently, and Netanyahu took it in good spirits.
The haredi MKs have a feeling that a miracle is about to happen – Lapid and his party and Livni and her party will quit the government, and the haredim and Kadima will enter instead of them. That's what some members of the Bayit Yehudi party are hoping for too.
The haredi desire is far from being fulfilled: Although Lapid and Bayit Yehudi Chairman Naftali Bennett are headed to a collision, and Lapid and Netanyahu are headed to a different kind of a collision, Lapid and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman are getting closer, and Netanyahu has no government without Lieberman.
Buji Herzog heard the voices at Deri's event and realized that the chance of turning Sheetrit into the opposition's official candidate was slim. The haredim are getting away: Rivlin's messengers are deeply rooted in the United Torah Judaism party, and now Shas is falling apart. Former MK Yoel Hasson of Hatnua party said that the Arab MKs had promised to vote for Sheetrit as one. There was no guarantee for that promise.
One of the problems which made it difficult for Sheetrit was the rumors regarding the circumstances which made him pay a huge amount of money in damages to his cleaning lady, and the circumstances which helped him gain such a fortune.
The value of rumors is hard to estimate, but we can learn something from two facts. First of all, Labor Party leaders questioned Sheetrit about the affair. He swore that he was innocent. Herzog telephoned Tzipi Livni in an attempt to find out the truth. Sheetrit got back to him and told him that Channel 10 had investigated the matter. The attorney general had looked into the affair and had made it clear in writing that there was no room for a criminal investigation.
The second fact is that Aryeh Deri said after the vote that Sheetrit should thank Shas for voting for Rivlin. Had he been elected, Sheetrit would have been squashed under the weight of the investigations against him.
In the first round, eight Shas members voted for former Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik. It was an impressive achievement. If it were not for the blatant media campaign against Itzik over the apartments she had purchased, she may have had a chance to beat Sheetrit and make it to the second round.
Itzik's candidacy was not regarded favorably in the Labor Party, the party she left in 2005 to join Kadima. Faction Chairman Eitan Cabel promised Rivlin that if she would make it to the second round, the entire faction would vote for him. That didn't happen, and Labor's votes in the second round were divided between Sheetrit and Rivlin.
Back to Shas: The faction members convened for a meeting between the first and second rounds. Deri announced freedom of vote. In the middle of the meeting, Minister Gideon Sa'ar of the Likud entered and pulled Deri out for a private conversation. Deri returned after five minutes, but the message was understood. MK Yakov Margi, who had promised to vote for Sheetrit, said he was bound by his vow. Deri annulled his vow.
Deri will be hosting another party on Wednesday, as part of the wedding celebrations. Like in the NBA playoff, where there is a match every other day, here there is a blessing every other day. The two guests of honor will be outgoing President Shimon Peres and President-elect Reuven Rivlin.
Presidential race's lessons
The presidential election leaves a lot of lessons behind. It requires a new order in politicians' election processes. The social media era is dominated by suspicion, and no one is interested in a candidate's nature, where he wishes to lead us, whether he is smart, whether he is competent. Every blogger crying out "corruption" is welcomed, even if the person crying out is as corrupt as those he is crying out about.
There is no escape from a proper investigation of all candidates, an exposure of every piece of property they own, a public hearing. It's possible that we'll receive cleaner candidates. It's also possible that we'll drive away all the talented people who fear for their privacy.
The second lesson is that the parties' leaders have no control of their members. When the vote is a secret one, even parties of one man, like Yesh Atid or Yisrael Beiteinu, are scattered in all directions. All the more so parties with a democratic tradition like Labor and the Likud.
The third lesson is that the government is suffering from an internal credibility crisis, and the prime minister is at the heart of this crisis. It is incapable of uniting around anything other than its seats. Such crises usually take place after three years of a government's term. This government is particularly quick.
The fourth lesson is that although half of the members of the current Knesset came from outside the parliament, most of its members are afraid to adopt new candidates. Naturally, the conversations the Knesset members had with the candidate touched on their chances. Former Supreme Court Judge Dalia Dorner demonstrated exaggerated optimism, which had nothing to do with reality. Nobel Prize laureate Dan Shechtman acted arrogantly. In the end he got one vote.
Coming full circle
Shimon Peres was an excellent export product during his presidency. Sometimes he was the fig leaf covering the government's inadequacies; sometimes he was the alternative, like this week, when he prayed with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the Vatican.
Rivlin will not be Shimon Peres. He has different views about the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, his diplomatic skills are less impressive, and he doesn't hold a Nobel Peace Prize. In his visits abroad he will try to speak in the name of consensus. If there is no such thing, he will try to invent it.
But Rivlin will be a uniting, embracing, warm president. Not only because he has to, but because that's what he is. He wants his first visit as president to take place in Kfar Kassem, an Israeli Arab town which has experienced a slaughter by Jews. He believes, somewhat naively, in a verse Revisionist Zionist leader Ze'ev Jabotinsky wrote for the Beitar anthem: "There shall live in wellbeing and happiness, the son of Arabia, the son of Nazareth and my son."
In 1957, Herut leader Menachem Begin introduced his party's candidate for president: Prof. Yosef Yoel Rivlin, a member of the right-wing party. Then-President Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, a Mapai member, was at the height of his popularity. Rivlin realized that he would be humiliated, and quit the race before the vote. His son's election on Tuesday was a case of coming full circle.
It's no coincidence that Netanyahu chose to mention the late father in the forced congratulations he poured on the elected president. When things are difficult with the living, when the heart is about to explode, you talk about the dead.
