Biggest election debacle

JERUSALEM - Less than two years after Ehud Barak was swept to power, he was swept out again by a whopping defeat of 25 percentage points.

Barak had billed the election, played out against a backdrop of violence, as a choice between war and peace.

Conceding defeat, he quit as Labour Party leader and said he was giving up his seat in Parliament after the biggest debacle in a prime ministerial election in Israel's history.

The defeat was all the more humiliating because it came only 21 months after Barak swept to power in his own landslide against Benjamin Netanyahu.

Results showed that Ariel Sharon won 62.5 per cent of votes cast compared to Barak's 37.4 per cent, with returns in from 99.9 per cent of polling stations.

Final results will be announced within a week, and Sharon will have 45 days to form a coalition.

Turnout was an unusually low 62 per cent, reflecting Israeli malaise and a boycott by Israeli Arab voters furious at Barak over the police killing of 13 of their brethren during pro-Palestinian protests last October.

Sharon's first task will be to assemble a coalition from the existing Knesset, or Parliament, because for the first time in Israel's history there was no parliamentary election alongside the voting for Prime Minister. Many Israelis believe that political in-fighting in the fractious Parliament will lead to a general election within a year.

Barak's imminent departure as Labour chief is likely to clear the way for a power struggle that could include Parliament Speaker Avraham Burg, Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami and former Prime Minister Shimon Peres.

- REUTERS

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