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Dec 22, 2013
Proposed law: Municipal election vacations
National elections is legally a vacation day. The government wants its citizens to participate in elections, and it encourages the people to do so by giving them a vacation day. Some people take the vacation day and still don't go vote, but most people don't really have a good excuse to not vote. Some choose not to because they don't like the options of whom to vote for, but some just prefer to spend the day on the beach or in the mall or doing whatever.
We are now on the way to getting another legal vacation day every 5 years or so.
Interior Minister Gideon Saar has proposed a law by which the day of municipal elections will officially be a legal vacation day. The proposal has now passed its initial reading in the ministerial legislative committee, and now has to be prepared for further voting in the Knesset.
Saar says that making it a legal vacation will increase the voter turnout, which has consistently decreased in recent years. Saar believes that municipal elections are no less important than national elections, and turning it into a vacation day will make it easier for people to actualize their democratic right to vote.
I agree and applaud the move. We can all use more legal vacation days. The more the merrier. And if they speed up the legislation, perhaps we in Bet Shemesh might already be able to benefit from this law quickly, if the courts will decide to call for new municipal elections due to fraud in the original edition of elections!
of course the Haredi media sees this as something bad and harmful to the haredim. The headline on Kikar's article about this proposal reads "Blow to the Haredim...".. and explains that the haredi community and haredi political parties has benefited from municipal elections being a work day, thus causing many non-haredim to not bother going to vote.
We are now on the way to getting another legal vacation day every 5 years or so.
Interior Minister Gideon Saar has proposed a law by which the day of municipal elections will officially be a legal vacation day. The proposal has now passed its initial reading in the ministerial legislative committee, and now has to be prepared for further voting in the Knesset.
Saar says that making it a legal vacation will increase the voter turnout, which has consistently decreased in recent years. Saar believes that municipal elections are no less important than national elections, and turning it into a vacation day will make it easier for people to actualize their democratic right to vote.
I agree and applaud the move. We can all use more legal vacation days. The more the merrier. And if they speed up the legislation, perhaps we in Bet Shemesh might already be able to benefit from this law quickly, if the courts will decide to call for new municipal elections due to fraud in the original edition of elections!
of course the Haredi media sees this as something bad and harmful to the haredim. The headline on Kikar's article about this proposal reads "Blow to the Haredim...".. and explains that the haredi community and haredi political parties has benefited from municipal elections being a work day, thus causing many non-haredim to not bother going to vote.
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Labels:
election,
haredim,
proposed law,
vacation
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Ridiculous - if people don't care enough about the elections to take a half-hour of their own time once every FIVE years, giving them a day off (at the expense of the employers, it should be noted) will not make a big difference.
ReplyDeleteDLZ, the issue is that many people have a very set schedule in the morning so the only time is in the evening between 6-10 when the lines are long.
ReplyDeleteMake it a half day. Many people do not really care about local issues anyway and a full day would be too much on companies who have to pay for a free vacation day. The media concentrates mainly about national issues, and the local media is not really developed and stays amateur at best, but usually just an advertisement weekly with poor content.
Half a day does sound like a better balance.
Delete"blow to the charedim" - like everything is a conspiracy against the charedim in one way or another. go, democracy!
ReplyDeleteThe fact that Chareidim see it as a "blow" to their interests just shows their view on democracy. The will of the majority is not what's important; it's who can win the game and accumulate the most power - and if you can do so by skewing the rules in a way that disenfranchises your opponent, that's just fine with the Chareidi powerbrokers.
ReplyDeleteWith an attitude like that, is it any surprise that some Chareidi groups took it one step further, to outright fraud, in the recent Beit Shemesh elections?
No - the article shows the views of ONE journalist on Kikar Shabbat who feels it is a blow to the charedim - please don't assume that all of us think the same way.
DeleteYou are correct that the article is, in fact, written by a single Chareidi writer. That being said, the attitude represented is quite prevalent in many sectors of the Israeli Chareidi community. It is less common amongst American Chareidim, but which group runs the Israeli Chareidi political machine???
DeleteAs the saying goes, "The proof of the pudding is in the eating". The recent fraud - and shrill denunciations of those who sought to expose such fraud - with respect to the elections in Beit Shemesh makes it abundantly clear that the Chareidi powers-that-be are interested only in power and how they can use it to their own benefit.
So - you personally may respect the democratic will of the electorate; the Israeli Chareidi leadership does not.
If you are a Chareidi in Bet Shemesh do you get 2 days off for the municipal elections?
ReplyDeleteI don't get it - the charedi response is always that charedim do work, at least in much higher numbers than normally assumed, so how can they complain that this hurts them because other people work and they dont so it used to be easier for them to go vote.
ReplyDelete