Labor leadership candidate demands disqualification of some 5000 ex-Likudniks who joined party in controversial recent membership drive.
By GIL STERN STERN HOFFMANShelly Yacimovich(photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
Labor leadership candidate Shelly Yacimovich asked the Tel Aviv District Court on Friday to disqualify some 5,000 former Likud members who joined Labor in its controversial recent membership drive.The Labor Party’s administration and its internal court permitted them to join the party, provided that they formally leave Likud. Yacimovich wants them excluded, because they had not left Likud when they joined Labor, and they broke the law that prohibits being a member of two parties.Labor chairmanship candidate Amir Peretz, who registered most of the ex- Likudniks, accused Yacimovich of trying to scare away new members who are frustrated with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s economic policies.“Yacimovich has gone crazy, and she is trying to force Labor into political suicide,” a spokesman for Peretz said.“Yacimovich wants to expel new voices from the party and send it back to the 1950s at a time when former Likud voters are looking for a new socioeconomic alternative.”The Yacimovich campaign responded that the way to restore the public’s faith in the party was to avoid undemocratic and unclean politics.“Labor’s renewal will be based on a true membership drive carried out according to the law,” a Yacimovich spokeswoman said.
