Benevolent Democratic Dictatorship

[eumelia]

On Tuesday February 10th the State of Israel will be voting for it's 18th General Election (and our 5th in a decade, seriously, "Third World" stability) and it is slim pickings.

I'm obsessing a bit on the decision because it will actually be the first time I vote for the country's Knesset and PM. This isn't so surprising when one realised that I turned 18 two weeks after the 2003 elections and was out of the country in 2006, so... didn't get to vote.
Add to all that, that I'm actually politically aware and that my own politics seriously do not align with... anything that's on the electoral market.

I've no faith in the system.

Even the small parties that are voted in have very little power and generally produce bills to do with social welfare which is always good, of course, but with the way this country is going in that regard it looks as though even the Communist Party (the forerunners in social welfare laws) will be losing it's footing.

The whole election process is such a crock. We, the citizens, know that each and everyone of the politicians is corrupt, that every single move they make is in their own self-interests, that none of them have any intention of creating change (other than increasing the change lining their pockets) and that any ideology they have is used for nothing more than for pushing an agenda that will give them more power.

The main election issue floating around in the media isn't social welfare, or even the mush hailed Peace Process (which has been a joke for many a year).

It's how "we're" going to deal with Gaza.

There's no talk about... talking.

The word Occupation hasn't been mentioned anywhere, leaving the conciousness of the masses who are gearing to vote for a government that will continue streaming money into an Army that is being trained in policing a population while calling it "Defence".
Indeed, the whole "Only Democracy in the Middle East" myth doesn't live up to the standard of Israel believes itself to emulate.
We are of the British parliamentary method.
The fact that there is a vote doesn't a Democracy make.
When it is your ethnicity that dictates whether you are a citizen or second-class citizen...
When your religion dictates who you can associate and marry...
Well, I don't see any Western ideal there.

One of my friends mentioned that she will be voting for Tzipi Livni.
I asked her why, genuinely curious.
She said she can't not vote for a woman, because even if she doesn't do anything different (which she won't in the event of her being elected) there is still something symbolic in having a woman Prime Minister.
And in general I would agree.
But the idea of voting for someone which the only difference between her and the other candidates is Livni being a woman (it's a big significance difference), when her politics are just atrocious as Netanyahu's and Barak's.

I'm seriously considering blank-balloting.

Comments

[sabrina-il.livejournal.com]

I actually wasn't looking for a point-by-point explanation! I mean, I can't stop you from giving one, but I think that would be missing my point? I know you can explain in comments 3 pages worth of your opinions and feelings and whatever on these subjects. What I was saying was that in the entry, reduced to simple statements, it sounded like what I explained. If you feel the statements were clear and exhaustive of the issues, and disagree with how their delivery felt to me, that's of course totally your right. If you feel I have a point about the delivery, you're free to of course elaborate on every point here, but my intention was just to bring it to your attention that this was the case. So I'm saying, what I was talking about weren't so much the issues themselves, as how they were put, my statements about the "issues" were just to give a few examples rather than delve into them.

I'm sorry, I thought by "this whole thing" you were referring to the vote/not vote for Linvi because she's a woman issue, since that was what we were discussing before, I misunderstood. Of course the elections in general are a moral issue among other things.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Okay fair enough.
Point taken.