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May 30, 2003/Iyar 28 5763, Vol. 55, No. 40
Mayoral vote to decide city's future
LESLIE SUSSER
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
JERUSALEM - Next week's vote for mayor of Jerusalem will be unprecedented: For the first time since the reunification of the city in 1967, no major national figure is running.
The front-runners are three candidates who until now were little known: Nir Barkat, 43, director of BRM, a venture capital firm worth an estimated $250 million; acting mayor Uri Lupoliansky, 51, founder of Yad Sarah, the biggest volunteer organization in the country; and deputy mayor Yigal Amedi, 47, a Likud activist who has been involved in local party politics since his teens.
The June 3 election comes just four days after Jerusalem Day, which celebrates the reunification of the capital under Jewish rule in the 1967 Six-Day War.
But it also comes as the city's future is more uncertain than ever: As momentum builds for new peace talks under the "road map" plan, Jerusalem's fate is sure to be reopened as the Palestinians demand the eastern part of the city for the capital of their expected state.
Major national players aren't lining up for the race.
Former Mayor Ehud Olmert was forced to resign after being elected to the Knesset on the Likud ticket in January, because of a new law prohibiting Knesset members or Cabinet ministers from serving as mayors at the same time. Had any of the other national politicians run, they would have had to leave behind the Knesset - and their national leadership aspirations - at least for the foreseeable future.
Each candidate is convinced he has a special contribution to make to the development of the capital in the 21st century.
Amedi, a self-made man from the poor Nahlaot neighborhood, claims to have an innate understanding of the city's residents and their needs.
"There is not a stone in the city I don't know," he boasts. If elected, he would be the first Jerusalem-born incumbent.
Barkat sees running the city in terms of a customer-driven service market: The people - the customers - must be empowered to let the service provider, the city, know what they want, and the city must then provide those services with maximum efficiency. If he wins, Barkat would be the first mayor elected on a non-party ticket.
Lupoliansky's flagship is Yad Sarah, which loans medical equipment to the sick and infirm, religious or secular, Jew or Arab.
Lupoliansky - who became the city's first fervently Orthodox mayor when he took over from Olmert in February - says he hopes to create a more caring community in which people from all sectors live in harmony.
But running a city holy to three religions, at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with more than 3,000 years of history - and a population of 670,000 that is the largest, poorest and most ethnically diverse in the country - will take more than sloganeering.
There are other pressing problems, too: the ongoing threat of Palestinian terrorism that keeps tourists away; keeping the peace between fervently Orthodox and secular Jews; restoring Jeru-salem's status as a great international city; and providing an acceptable level of services to Palestinians in the eastern part of the city.
With less than a week to go, polls show Barkat and Lupoliansky running neck and neck at around 40 percent, with Amedi winning 10 percent to 15 percent. If no candidate wins 40 percent on the first ballot, there will be a run-off between the top two finishers.
Leslie Susser is the diplomatic correspondent for the Jerusalem Report.
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