If one thing is certain in Israeli life, you are going to have to wait for it.
Ask anyone about the lines in supermarkets and banks. The public offices of the Interior Ministry are infamous for their inability to do something in two minutes when an hour will do. Oh, and of course the classic example, Israelis want peace yesterday, but so far they have been waiting for 54 years.
The name of the game here is
…
…
…
waiting.
You see, eventually you will get what you want, well perhaps, but it takes an inordinate amount of time.
But as with everything else in Israeli life, there is an exception.
The regular election process in this country is a slow laborious (or should that be Likudious, in order to be politically balanced) affair. The length of the actual campaign can be several months, to say nothing of the half-year-plus of unofficial electioneering ahead of time.
And so to the exception.
When Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced his intention to hold elections within 90 days, earlier this week, one’s mind filled with a variety of images of distraught Israelis who would be panicking about the narrow timeframe.
The PR types must have thought to themselves “but we need a month for the jingle, two months for the slogan and a week or three to print the car bumper stickers.”
The head teachers probably rushed for the Acamol (Tylenol). After all, they have to give all the children the election day off school and you know how long it takes not to prepare class work for a day. They also have another tremendous burden to bear. They have to pull out two tables come election day; one for the voting booth and one for the ballot box.
Come to think of it now, those people who spend all day sitting next to the ballot box making sure you know how to put the slip of paper into the slit, as if you have never mailed a letter before, must have entered panic stations when they found out they only had 90 days to decide which poorly-matching, garish clothing and make-up they will adorn themselves with, come polling day. That also only gave them 90 days to practice that really stern look they wear all day long, you know, the one that says “I’ll report you to the election authorities if you post your ballot slip sideways instead of lengthways. It’s there in back and white in the 14th appendix to the 1952 Basic Law: Angular Voting, section 654(d), paragraph 2.”
Okay, so maybe I am exaggerating just a tad, but the bottom line remains.
It is a miracle that the PR executives, the national elections central committee and everyone else will be able to cope with a low-budget election within 90 days. And mark my words, it will go off perfectly smoothly (I hope).
So why, oh why, does every other blasted election in this wonderful democracy take months? Let the January 2003 (probable date) election be the turning of a new page. May it be a sign to those lovely ladies at the checkout counters in the supermarkets, and to the anonymous minions of the Interior Ministry – things can be done quickly and efficiently. And that, I bet, will save the country’s health service a fistful of dollars. The average Israeli blood-pressure count will fall considerably and so too the number of cardiac arrests. All this and more.
Thank you Mr. Sharon for the 90-day election.