TEL AVIV, 9 January 2003 — What do a 27-year-old waitress, a former chauffeur and a convicted murderer have in common?

They are leading candidates to enter the Knesset after a scandal-plagued process to choose members from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s Likud party.

When the party’s central committee recently selected them, pushing some of the party’s leading figures to the bottom of the list, it seemed merely a political embarrassment to Sharon. But it has since become more damaging.

The accusation is that many Likud candidates acquired their nominations by buying them. According to reports from candidates and party officials, Likud’s nomination process was dominated by a small group of vote contractors who exploited some of the peculiar features of Israel’s election process.

Israeli news reports say police are recommending corruption charges be filed against half a dozen Likud party activists, including sitting member of the Knesset Naomi Blumenthal, who invoked her right to silence when interrogated by police this week.

Although Sharon remains the most popular politician in Israel, his party has lost as much as a quarter of its support in the past three weeks, largely as a result of the scandal.

The drop threatens what had seemed an easy and inevitable election victory.

"The best thing that could happen (for Sharon) is for the US strike on Iraq to begin Sunday," was the sardonic comment of a columnist in Israel’s leading daily, Yedioth Ahronoth.

Israeli voters cast ballots for parties rather than individual candidates. Each party assembles a list of candidates, and the more votes it wins in the general election, the more of them enter the Knesset.

In Likud’s case, the candidates and their rankings were determined by the 2,940 members of the party’s central committee, many of them controlled by the vote contractors who horse-traded their votes, and, if the allegations are true, sold them as well.

The most surprising winner to emerge was Inbal Gavrieli, 27, a waitress with no known qualification for public office other than the enthusiastic support of her father’s family. The family is involved in gambling and has been the frequent target of police investigations. Gavrieli’s father, Shoni, gave elaborate dinners on her behalf during the nomination campaign, attended by many of Likud’s most prominent members, including the minister and deputy minister responsible for police.

In the end, Gavrieli obtained a higher place on the Likud list than Ehud Olmert, the mayor of Jerusalem, who had been tipped for a senior post in Sharon’s next government.

Other unexpected successes: Michael Gorlovsky, formerly a driver for extreme right-wing politician Avigdor Lieberman, and Ehud Yatom, a one-time security officer who was convicted of bludgeoning two Palestinian captives to death in 1984.

Soon after the central committee met Dec. 8 to choose the Likud list, accusations surfaced from defeated candidates, and even some successful ones, that they had been approached by vote contractors to pay for support.

The going rate was alleged to be about $200 a vote. That sparked the police investigation, and led to the resignations of several central-committee members and the prospect of indictments — though not, perhaps, until after the election, scheduled for Jan. 28. Sharon has done his best to distance himself from the affair. He has dumped Blumenthal from the Likud list because of her refusal to cooperate with the police investigation.

But his efforts have been blunted because his son Omri, also a candidate for the Knesset, was a prominent wheeler-dealer during the candidate-selection process, allegedly working with two ex-cons who are now political organizers.

"My son, Omri, had nothing to do with criminal elements who managed to get into the central committee," says Sharon.

When Sharon called the election in November, polls predicted that Likud would win more than 40 seats in the 120-member Knesset, and more than double its total.

Recent polls suggest the party has sagged to 31 or 32 seats, with no guarantee that the slide has stopped.

If there is any solace for Sharon, it is that the support Likud is losing is not being picked up by its traditional rivals on the left, such as the once-dominant Labor Party. Instead, it is going to smaller parties on the center and right that might be enticed into a coalition after the election.

Moreover, Sharon remains much more popular than his party or the other party leaders. (SHNS)