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Israeli Presidential Election Starts
The Israeli legislators on Monday started to cast their votes to elect the country's eighth president, also the first one to serve a seven-year term.
Two candidates, Shimon Peres from the ruling One Israel and Moshe Katsav from the opposition Likud party, are competing for the largely ceremonial post. The winner will be decided in a secret ballot by the 120 Knesset (Parliament) members (MKs).
As the election process dictates, the two candidates voted first and then retired to separate rooms to await the results.
A four-member elections committee, consisting of MKs Dalia Rabin-Pelosoff from the Center Party, who was assigned to chair the committee, Chairman of the Likud faction Reuven Rivlin and his One Israel counterpart Ophir Pines-Paz and Abdulmalik Dehamshe from the United Arab Party, is supervising the voting process.
The members of the committee have signed all of the 120 envelopes into which legislators will cast their ballots. Any envelope in which two ballots are found will be disqualified.
After the voting, the committee is to count the votes in complete privacy. And Rabin-Pelosoff will open the envelopes and read out the names, which the other three committee members will duly record.
Thereafter, Rabin-Pelosoff will fill out and sign a special form for the occasion. It will then be signed by the other three committee members and passed to Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg who will announce the name of the winner.
If one of the candidates gets at least 61 votes, a delegation of deputy speakers will proceed to the Chagall Hall in the Knesset, where a ceremony announcing the results of the vote will be held. The president-elect will then be invited to the Knesset Tuesday for a swearing-in ceremony.
If neither of them receives 61 votes, a second voting is to be held, following the same procedures as in the first round. If the second round fails to produce a winner, a third round will be held, which requires a simple majority.
Peres, the leading candidate, resigned from cabinet on Sunday as Minister of Regional Cooperation in preparations for the election. If he is elected president, his resignation will come into effect in 48 hours which falls on Tuesday before he takes the oath of office. If, however, he is not elected, he will have time to retract the resignation before the 48 hours have elapsed.
The new president will arrive at the Knesset on Tuesday at 6:00 p.m. (1500 GMT), escorted by seven police motorcyclists and five mounted policemen. He will receive a guard of honor and then await the swearing-in ceremony, which will begin half an hour later in the office of the Speaker. Former President Ezer Weizman will also be present.
Some 1,200 guests, including the judges of the Supreme Court, members of the Israeli Defense Force General Staff, senior members of the diplomatic corps and other celebrities will also attend the ceremony.
After the new president takes the oath of office, shofars (rams'horns) will be sounded and all the MKs will call out, "Long live the president." The president will then deliver his maiden speech and the ceremony will conclude with the singing of the national anthem.
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