Who would want to be a politician in three of our sister democracies, the United States of America, Great Britain or Israel right now? Seriously!
Israel is facing its third national election in calendar year 2019. The first two elections have resulted in no single political party commanding a majority in its single chamber Parliament, the Knesset.
That’s not unusual. It’s a list-based system (a bit like our upper house voting system in Australia) that results in many political parties being represented.
What is unusual, is that a coalition has not been able to be formed by the Prime Minister, Bibi Netanyahu, nor his main opponent, Benny Gantz, of the newly formed Blue and White Alliance.
If Netanyahu can’t knit together a coalition in 28 days, he has to rely on the President to give him a third election chance and his Likud Party will need to choose him to be their leader again when he hasn’t been able to win twice this year already.
Alternatively, the President can ask Gantz to attempt to form a coalition government.
If no one can, the President can send them back to the polls.
All that, in one of the hottest of hottest spots in the world – the Middle East – which has just become a lot hotter with the invasion of northern Syria by Turkey.
Sound complicated? Compare that to politics in Great Britain.
Read the article by Christopher Pyne in The Advertiser.