Drama in the future: Lapid won the elections for the party leadership - by a margin of only 30 votes / Walla system!
When the results of the first elections for the leadership of Yesh Atid were read this evening at the end of the party conference at the Eretz Israel Museum in Tel Aviv, for a few fractions of a second there was complete silence in the hall. The preliminary betting exchange for the fight between party chairman Yair Lapid and MK Ram Ben Barak predicted the latter a result of 20, maybe 30 percent of the close to 600 voters at the party conference.
The cynics among the journalists mocked and belittled a pre-addicted battle: this is Lapid's party, a conference chosen by Lapid's people, what can happen? Indeed, when Lapid was announced as the winner, not a single head in the audience moved at first, but immediately after, when it became clear that he had won with only 52.5% of the votes, the applause lingered for a short time, out of surprise, embarrassment and shock. Ben Barak, with 47.5%, was only 30 votes away from him, a scenario that none of the happenings and gamblers predicted.
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On the face of it, it's a blow to the torch, a loss on the home field imaginable. After losing the prime ministership to Netanyahu in 2022, and losing to Gantz the leadership of the center-left bloc in the polls in 2023, he even won the presidency of his own party only with difficulty. Yesh Atid was founded 12 years ago in the image and likeness of Lapid, and for years he led it under a single rule: he extended his tenure as the party's chairman time after time, having sole and exclusive control over the statutes, mechanism and appointments. After a decade, in an attempt to get rid of the North Korean image, he finally announced 2021 on the establishment of the first party conference and the holding of the first primaries, only that no one dared to face him. The second time, Ben Barak dared to dare, and achieved an impressive feat, one that makes one think that maybe there was a good reason that Lapid avoided holding these elections first, for example when his partner and personal friend Ofer Shelah asked for a primary in 2020, and wonder what the result would have been if Meir Cohen, number 2 and the legendary field man, had run against Lapid.
What would have been the result if he had faced the chairman? Meir Cohen next to Lapid, tonight/Reuven Castro
Unlike Meshlach and Cohen, Ben Barak, the former deputy head of the Mossad, did not run with Lapid in the founding trenches of Yesh Atid, and only joined the party in 2018. But he plowed the field in recent months in a quiet and personal campaign, far from social media, in conversations and personal meetings with each of the 726 members of the conference. In many ways it is the opposite of a torch; A settler and not an urbanite, a Bithonist and not a man in the camp, a man who for most of his life was not allowed to talk about what he was doing and not a man who made a career out of his verbal talent and charisma. Those around Lapid estimated that Ben Barak would gain sympathy and support that would buy him a certain share of the vote, especially from people who would not want to see him lose a battle in which the winner was predetermined, if only to praise his willingness and courage to face him. But they did not read the picture correctly: the final result indicates that the vote for Ben Barak was also a form of expressing no confidence in Lapid and a vote of protest against his one-man rule. But it is also a very significant moment -
a kind of declaration of independence - in the life of the party he founded and built from scratch. Lapid became a grandfather for the first time this week, and Yesh Atid is also undergoing a process of maturation for future generations.
So it was a bad evening for Lapid, but a good evening for Lish Atid, who finished her first elections with honors, with a contest free of poison machines and slander, and a last-minute drama that exceeded all expectations. Those who thought that the elections were rigged by Lapid and his people were probably mistaken - it is unlikely that they would have engineered such a close result that undermines his leadership. The people of his party, who are always labeled as naysayers, really expressed a position. One of the wonders of democracy. So, despite the image blow in the narrow victory, Lapid nevertheless ends the elections successfully: no one will be able to call him a future dictatorship and paint him as a North Korean leader.
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