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Last update - 11:51 04/12/2008
Labor Party holds primary, after first attempt suffers technical glitch
By The Associated Press
Tags: labor party, elections 

Polls opened on Thursday to give 60,000 Labor Party members a chance to choose their party's parliamentary list.

When Labor first tried to hold its primary this week, it proudly touted its pioneering use of a new computer touch-screen voting system. But just three hours into the voting, the system crashed, delaying the primary until Thursday, when party members began choosing candidates for a Feb. 10 parliamentary election expected to hand Labor a humiliating defeat. This time, voters were using paper ballots.

The computer breakdown was a fitting metaphor, emblematic of how the movement that led the country to independence, dominated politics for decades and produced such luminaries as David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Rabin has fallen from grace.
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Critics say that despite its illustrious past, today's Labor doesn't have a clear agenda or appealing leadership.

With parliamentary elections less than three months away, polls predict Labor could be whittled down to just the fifth-largest faction in parliament and pushed to the fringes of Israeli politics. Its leader, Ehud Barak, a darling of the U.S. when he was prime minister earlier this decade, could soon be forced into retirement.

While Israeli polls have been off the mark before, things have gotten so bad that some Labor stalwarts are even recommending merging with the ruling Kadima Party to avoid lapsing into irrelevance.

The battle is a tough one, said Labor's secretary-general, Eitan Cabel, who opposes a merger.

The Feb. 10 election was called after corruption allegations drove Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to announce his resignation. Olmert is expected to stay on until a government is formed after the vote.

Recent polls all predict a victory by the hardline Likud Party of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who opposes current peace talks with the Palestinians.

Olmert's centrist Kadima, led by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, is polling second, while Labor is barely on the political map. Hemorrhaging voters to Kadima, it's seen winning as few as six of parliament's 120 seats, down from 19 in the outgoing parliament.

At its peak in 1969, Labor and a partner won 56 seats in the parliament and dropped below 40 only twice before 1996, when its erosion took hold.

Cabel predicted that if Labor gets its house in order, it could win up to 21 seats by convincing the public that Barak is the right man to face down the threats to Israel's security and economy.

For all of Labor's problems, it might be premature to count it out just yet. Netanyahu's Likud shrank from 38 seats to 12 in the last elections in 2006, before bouncing back again.

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