Israel's Kadima party announces early leadership elections

Jan 18, 2012, 14:28 GMT

Tel Aviv - Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni on Wednesday announced that Kadima would hold primaries on March 27 to elect a leader to lead the centrist party into a parliamentary election next year.

More than 100,000 party members are to vote on whether Livni, former defence minister Shaul Mofaz, or another candidate will challenge Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's rightist Likud party in February 2013.

'The elections in Israel are no longer a faraway mirage and are beginning to come closer,' Livni told a news conference at the party headquarters near Tel Aviv. 'Kadima must be ready.'

Mofaz, Livni's most serious rival, announced his candidacy at a separate news conference. A relative hardliner, he is also a former military chief of staff.

Polls give Mofaz, 63, only a slight lead over Livni, 53, a former foreign minister who led negotiations with the Palestinians under the Kadima-led government of Ehud Olmert.

Those negotiations broke off in late 2008 when Olmert stepped down to face corruption charges, which prompted an early election in February 2009.

Critics have called Livni, respected internationally as Israel's former foreign minister, a weak and low-profile opposition leader. Mofaz on the other hand is called a populist by critics.

Livni has been under pressure to announce early primaries, especially after a popular journalist, Yair Lapid, announced this month he would quit presenting Channel 2's in-depth Friday night news bulletin to enter politics. If he forms his own centrist party, he would seriously challenge Kadima, which has struggled over the past years.

Polls have predicted that Kadima would lose about half the 28 seats it currently holds in parliament if elections were held today, most of which would go to Lapid.

Netanyahu's Likud, which won 27 seats in the 2009 election, would win an equal number of seats, or emerge even stronger, if elections were held today, polls show. Likud is scheduled to hold primaries on January 31, but Netanyahu faces no strong rivals.

'Tzipi livni today ended her task as chairwoman of Kadima,' Mofaz said. 'Today, the journey to replace Netanyahu has begun.'

The polls currently predict that Kadima would fare worse in the next election with Mofaz at the helm, winning about 8 mandates compared to roughly 13 under Livni.

Kadima, formed by former prime minister Ariel Sharon when he split from the nationalist Likud in late 2005 ahead of the March 2006 elections, could reemerge as a stronger force if it joined forces with Lapid, but he has so far rejected calls to do so.