the most interesting elections

With municipal elections nearly upon us, I think the most interesting arena to watch will be the Bnei Braq elections. And yes, that will be even more interesting than my own home town of Bet Shemesh which has its own intrigue and excitement going on.

Bnei Braq has not had real elections, at least not in a long time. the Degel and Aguda parties had an arrangement, officially agreed upon, by which they would divvy up the municipal offices, with a rotation arrangement, including the mayor's office. No need for elections as only one candidate would run for mayor each time.

Because of all sorts of broken deals around the country, mostly starting with Elad, Shas is upset at Degel and has decided they want a piece of the pie in Bnei Braq as well. They supposedly offered to join the rotation agreement and making it a 3 way rotation, but has so far been refused. So, Shas decided to run its own candidate, Uriel Buso, currently a Shas MK and formerly a deputy mayor in Petach Tikva.

Supposedly the numbers indicate that Shas could take up to about a third of the votes in Bnei Braq, though I am not sure there is any accurate count, considering no municipal elections have been held there in ages.

If Degel and Aguda continue their arrangement, a third of the votes (and that is if they maximize their vote) is not going to get Buso the victory.

However, as Kikar reports, Buso is actually polling much higher and seems to have a good chance of winning the race, if the polls are to be believed. That makes this an interesting and watchable race. If Buso wins that means Bnei Braq, the stronghold of the Haredi community, the stronghold of UTJ, not just is no longer, but it would also mean that the public is no longer listening to the gedolim. For Buso to win it means [some of] the Ashkenazi residents, a fairly significant amount, will have to ignore the instructions of the rabbonim and vote for the Shas candidate instead of the Degel-Aguda candidate. That makes this super interesting. I do wonder if we are seeing a major drift in the culture of the Haredi community where people start to vote for what they think is best rather than for whom they are told to vote...

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