Blue and White MK: Court should not disqualify Netanyahu

A senior Blue and White party lawmaker on Monday came out against a petition to the High Court of Justice seeking to block Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from forming the next government due to the pending indictment against him.

MK Ofer Shelah, a staunch opponent of the premier, said he believed Netanyahu should be voted out of office by the people, not removed by judges.

“The court will rule properly, as it sees fit, but in my eyes, it would be far better not to forbid Netanyahu from forming the government,” Shelach said in a statement.

“A prime minister under indictment is publicly wrong, and we will not sit [in a government] with him, but it would be better for the public to make this ruling, not the Supreme [Court].”

Shelah’s remarks echoed comments made by Netanyahu, who on Sunday accused the judiciary of subverting democracy.

“In a democracy, it is the people who decide who will lead them, not anyone else. Otherwise, it just isn’t democracy,” Netanyahu said in a video posted to social media shortly after the court’s announcement that it would hear the case.

The petition against Netanyahu’s potential reelection comes as the prime minister has been accusing prosecutors, the media, and the judiciary of working together in an effort to bring him down on trumped-up corruption charges.

Last month, Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit announced an indictment against Netanyahu in three corruption cases, which include charges of breach of trust, fraud, and, in the most serious case, bribery.

The court’s decision to rule on the question of Netanyahu’s legal eligibility to run for office appears set to spark a new round of political skirmishing, and will likely be used by Netanyahu’s campaign to shore up his assertion that the legal system is staging an “attempted coup” in a bid to topple the right.

In its Sunday decision, the court said the hearing would take place December 31 at 9 a.m. before a three-judge panel led by Chief Justice Esther Hayut and including Deputy Chief Justice Hanan Melcer and Justice Uzi Vogelman.

The court also asked Mandelblit to produce a legal opinion on the question of Netanyahu’s eligibility to return to the prime minister’s chair, to be handed to the court at least 48 hours before the hearing.

The law stipulates that a sitting prime minister is only required to resign after he or she is convicted of a serious crime and all appeals have been exhausted. But judicial precedent from the early 1990s and longstanding practice have set a stricter standard for other ministers, who have been forced to resign their cabinet posts, at least temporarily, once indictments have been announced in their cases.

The petition in question was brought in mid-December by attorney Dafna Holtz-Lachner in the name of a group of 67 well-known public figures, academics and tech executives.

It argues that the law’s leniency toward an indicted prime minister only refers to a serving premier, not an MK seeking a new appointment to the post, like Netanyahu, who is officially an interim prime minister. It asks the question: Based on the standard according to which a regular cabinet minister must resign when under indictment, can an MK in a similarly compromised legal position be appointed prime minister in the first place?

The appeal also says that voters have the right to know ahead of the upcoming March 2 election if Netanyahu can legally be appointed by President Reuven Rivlin after election day.

Netanyahu’s legal woes are partially responsible for an unprecedented year-long political deadlock that will see a third election in 11 months held on March 2, 2020. The election was called after Netanyahu twice failed to form a government, following the April 9 and September 17 elections. Challenger Benny Gantz of the Blue and White party also failed in his attempt to cobble together a ruling coalition last month.

The centrist Blue and White has refused to join a coalition either with Netanyahu as a prime minister under indictment or one that would require it to support parliamentary immunity for the longtime premier.

In a petition last month, the corruption watchdog Movement for Quality Government asked the High Court to force Netanyahu to resign outright. That appeal was tossed out in late November after both Mandelblit and the judge hearing the petition, Justice Yosef Elron, concluded that such a resignation had no practical meaning.

Mandelblit noted that Netanyahu’s current legal standing as interim prime minister — head of a caretaker government awaiting the successful conclusion of an election to be replaced by a full-fledged elected government — would not be changed by his resignation, as such a resignation, under law, triggers an election to select a new PM while the outgoing one remains in office with the same “interim” status.