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Likud to replace Sharon
19/12/2005 13:00 - (SA)
Chris Otton
Jerusalem - Members of Israel's right-wing Likud were voting on Monday for a new leader who will be tasked with rebuilding a party devastated by the recent defection of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Polling booths throughout the country opened at 08:00 GMT, enabling around 130 000 card-carrying members of Israel's main right-wing party to vote over a 12-hour period.
The main contenders are former premier Benjamin Netanyahu and the relative moderate Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, who decided to stick with Likud rather than follow seven cabinet colleagues in joining Sharon's new Kadima party.
The contest has been partially overshadowed by news that Sharon has suffered a minor stroke, although the 77-year-old was said to be recovering well.
Two other right-wingers, Agriculture Minister Israel Katz and Moshe Feiglin, have no realistic prospect of victory but could delay any coronation by at least a week if they prevent either front-runner from gaining 40% of the vote at the first attempt.
Polls have consistently placed Netanyahu well ahead of his rivals since the vacancy arose with Sharon's dramatic resignation from the party he founded in 1973.
A poll for the Maariv daily last week found that 45.5% of Likud members who are intending to vote on December 19 will support Netanyahu while only 22% will back Shalom.
Fed up with battling hardliners
Even though Netanyahu has tried to kill any sense of complacency by saying he expected a tight contest, it would be a major surprise if the 56-year-old did not reclaim his position at the helm of the party which he led to victory in the 1996 general election and defeat three years later.
With Sharon as leader, Likud won 38 of the Knesset's 120 seats in January 2003 but polls have indicated that the party will now do well to get more than a dozen when the country as a whole votes on March 28.
Sharon decided to quit Likud as he had become fed up with battling hardliners such as Netanyahu who refused to forgive him for pulling settlers and then troops out of the Gaza Strip over the summer.
Netanyahu quit his cabinet post as finance minister in protest at the pull-out in August and then tried to force Sharon into an early leadership contest, only losing a vote among members of the Likud's central committee by the narrowest of margins in September.
Shalom was only ever lukewarm about the pull-out but he remained in cabinet and has since tried to claim credit for a slight thaw in Israel's relations with the Muslim world.
During the course of the campaign, Netanyahu has stressed his intention to take the Likud back to what he sees as its core roots.
Shalom in contrast has been painting himself as the man who can help unite Likud, urging members not to allow "the extremists take over the Likud completely".
- AFP
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