The Ministerial Committee on Legislative Affairs, chaired by Justice Minister Gideon Saar (New Hope) is scheduled to debate on Sunday two private bills that seek to prevent a defendant facing criminal charges from forming a government. They might as well have named it the “making sure Bibi can’t be prime minister Law,” because without such a law on the books, the Likud chairman is going to collect 35 to 36 seats in the coming election, and the polls show him pulling together at least 61 MKs, possibly a great deal more.
MK Eli Avidar actually told Reshet Bet radio Sunday morning that if the “Defendant Law” is not passed by the Knesset before it is dissolved, it would constitute a danger to democracy. In other words, democracy would suffer if the votes for the largest political party in Israel are not subverted through this extra-electoral, judicial process.
Wow.
The Knesset Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee held a theoretical debate of the defendant’s law, ahead of the ministerial committee’s session, where committee chairman, MK Gilad Kariv (Labor) said he expected that once the bills are passed in a preliminary reading in the plenum and reach the Knesset committee, the committee chairman, Yamina’s enfant terrible MK Nir Orbach, would refer the bill to the Constitution Committee for debate and amendments and without delay.
Not gonna happen.
Kariv added that should the bill be delayed by Orbach through the official dissolution of the Knesset, he would move ahead of time with his own bill on behalf of the Constitution Committee, to be debated there.
Minister Saar said on Sunday morning that he had kind of given up on this hasty legislation. He is right. Also, even if the new prime minister, Yair Lapid, solicits the support of the Joint Arab List and manages to pass a bill disqualifying Netanyahu, the Supreme Court would be compelled to strike it down, if solely based on the fire sale haste involved in its inception.
Still-Prime Minister Naftali Bennett told Kan 11 Saturday night, in an extensive and much-hyped interview, that he is still against the attempt to disqualify Netanyahu based on charges that are yet to be proven.
