Local elections

Big day in Israel as all municipalities hold their local elections. In our village, there are 13 seats on the city council up for grabs and the mayor's seat. We have a local religious party that is expecting to do very well this year. I am voting for them. I haven't decided who to vote for mayor yet. My choices are the incumbant, who has been the mayor for 30 years and is a dictator and a Likud guy who's running under Gaydamak's banner who has been trying to throw out the current mayor for years.

We threw a small get together for the current mayor at our house Saturday night. About 30 people showed up and we listened to the mayor tell us that he liked religious people and we really didn't need to vote for our party because his party would take care of us in any case. I agreed to have the get together because someone in our community asked me to do it so that the mayor feels he has support in our community. That way when we approach him after the elections, if he wins, he will feel that at least some of us are on his side.

The reaon we don't like the other guy is because he has been running an incredibly vicious, negative campaign. He hasn't said anything good that he will do, he just focuses on how corrupt the other guy is. Now for the past 5 years that I have been living in the city, it has been run very well. The city looks good and no matter what everyone is saying about education, the children are getting a decent one. There is growth and most of the problems that the other guy tries to throw on him probably aren't his fault. He did remove a 30,000 shekel debt that his daughter owed to the city and his son-in-law is making a nice salary on a job that he probably doesn't deserve, but I can't imagine that sort of thing would change with any new guy.

Also I like local dictators. I think they are a very efficient form of government. The religious politicos say that the current mayor has been giving them hell for the past 5 years and I should vote for the other guy. Other people in the community have been telling me that the mayor has helped us out in the past and because he's going to win anyways, we should support him so that he doesn't take it out on us later.