BREAKING NEWS

Barak denies he is running for Labor leader

JUNE 4, 2019 22:21

Former prime minister Ehud Barak denied a report on Tuesday by Army Radio political analyst Yaakov Bardugo that he is running for Labor party leader.

“If I will have something to announce, you will find it – not just on Twitter,” he tweeted, answering followers who asked him if the report was true.

Channel 12 reported on Monday that Barak is considering running for Labor leader or forming a new party and that he is commissioning polls. All recent polls have found that if Barak ran, he would receive very little support.

Former politician Micha Goldman, who is close to Barak, said to Maariv that the former prime minister is considering running for the Labor party leadership and that “the direction is more positive than less.”

A former IDF chief-of-staff, Barak was prime minister from 1999 – 2001 and currently chairs the lucrative medical marijuana company InterCure. He has led Labor twice.

Some 60,000 Labor Party members will be eligible to chose the successor to Avi Gabbay in the July 2 leadership race and not just a group of 3,300 activists, Labor’s executive committee decided on Tuesday.

The decision opened up the election to outsiders who do not know the party’s grassroots activists. Barak and former IDF deputy chief of staff Yair Golan are going to make a decision soon about whether to run. Other candidates are expected to include MKs Amir Peretz, Itzik Shmuli and Stav Shaffir and former MKs Danny Yatom and Danny Atar.

The decision to hold the election among the party membership must be approved next Wednesday at a party convention. Ahead of that vote, Labor’s law committee will decide whether to also vote at the convention on a proposal by Peretz to have party activists elect the leader.

Regarding the candidates for Knesset, the executive committee decided that there would be a vote at the convention on electing the list among the membership or keeping the list from the April 9 election and using it for the race on September 17.

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