November 25, 2012 (TSR) – Officials at branches of Israel’ s chief Likud party reported severe technical problems at polling stations countrywide Sunday morning, halting the outset of a daylong round of voting to set a party slate for national elections on Jan. 22 for the 19th Knesset (parliament).
While party Chairman, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who cast his ballot at party headquarters in Tel Aviv when polling stations opened at 9:00 a.m., exhorted members to head to the polls to make their voices heard, crashed internet servers kept more than 123,000 other members from voting at sites throughout the country.
Diaspora Affairs Minister Yuli Edelstein, who voted Sunday morning at Jerusalem’s International Convention Center (ICC) and then left, was forced to retrace his steps to again cast his ballot, when results from the first try were not sent to the party ‘s central database via the malfunctioning touchscreen system.
Netanyahu called on members “to participate in the festival of democracy in the Likud, the largest party, the ruling party. You have the right to choose who will be in the power in the coming years in the State of Israel. I call on you to come and vote, to influence, and to decide.”
The prime minister is the only member guaranteed one of 24 slots in the coming Knesset, with the second to 12th seats going to an overall national list, with reserved spots for two women and a new immigrant candidate, according to The Jerusalem Post.
Outside the ICC, crowds of members from the greater Jerusalem areas, including settlements to the north and south, thronged tents and tables filled with candidates, flyers, posters and stickers, as rousing music blared from speakers outside.
At the entrances, security personnel held back hundreds of members patiently waiting to cast their ballots.
Among those standing on line was Tzvi Weissman, a resident of the large and ideologically influential West Bank settlement of Beit El, north of Ramallah.
“I’m with the right-wing of the Likud,” he told Xinhua, ticking off rightist party ideologues like coalition Chairman Ze’ev Elkin and Danny Danon, who chairs the Knesset’s Aliyah, Absorption and Diaspora Committee.
“I hope we’ll be able to get in to vote,” he said as he stood in a crowded line, awaiting his turn, and added that “I trust Bibi, ” using Netanyahu’s nickname.
Likud spokesman Noa Rappaport told local media that, as of 13: 30 p.m., “Many of the problems have been repaired,” and that ” voters can cast a ballot at any station – not only at those near their place of residence.”
However, “If it goes on like this, we won’t be able to proceed with voting today,” Minister of Intelligence and Atomic Energy Dan Meridor said, according to the Haaretz daily, adding that ” supporters are coming, and they won’t let them come in and vote. They’ll just despair and go home.”
Meanwhile, biding her time on a nearby bench, elderly Jerusalemite and veteran British immigrant Flik Amos told Xinhua that the army’s just-concluded week-long Operation Pillar of Defense to halt Hamas rocket fire from Gaza into Israel wasn’t enough, and that Netanyahu’s agreeing to the fragile Egyptian- brokered cease fire would likely affect her vote.
“It didn’t go far enough,” Flik said of the some 1,500 airstrikes on rockets, launchers, and military infrastructure, to put a stop to a near equal number of launches into Israeli towns and cities that killed six and wounded and traumatized hundreds of others across Israel’s southlands surrounding the coastal enclave.
Daniel Tauber, an American immigrant and head of the party’s western English-speaking faction, told Xinhua, that he hoped members “would vote for candidates that want to see terrorists destroyed.”
Saying that, “if this was in the United States, if one rocket had been fired, people would be clamoring for heads,” he added, “I think about my daughter, and the fact that one day she’s going to be subjected to the threat of terror.”
Assuming voting is not cancelled, polls are to close at 22:00 p. m., with initial results to be announced at midnight.
Source: Xinhua
