Communications minister assailed for declaring he won’t comply with High Court order
Karhi accuses court of usurping authority; opposition leader Lapid says law must be obeyed, Gantz warns of anarchy if ministers fail to comply with court orders
Jeremy Sharon is The Times of Israel’s legal affairs and settlements reporter
Opposition leaders on Tuesday condemned Communication Minister Shlomo Karhi for declaring that he would defy the High Court of Justice and refuse to implement its order in a fight surrounding the tenure of members of the Kan public broadcaster’s governing council.
The governing council has not been able to operate since November, when the tenure of two members expired, with Karhi failing to appoint replacements. The court ordered on Monday that the tenure of those two members be extended until they are replaced.
Opposition Leader Yair Lapid condemned Karhi for his comments, insisting on Radio 103FM that cabinet ministers must obey the law and comply with court orders, while National Unity leader Benny Gantz said that failure to abide by court rulings was “a black line in a democracy.”
On Monday evening, following the High Court ruling, Karhi claimed that it was issued “without authority” and “in contravention of the law,” and said it was therefore not legally binding upon him.
Karhi insisted that the Law for the Israeli Public Broadcaster empowers the communications minister alone to extend the tenure of governing council members, and that the court order was therefore unlawful.
Karhi is a far-right member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party and an outspoken critic of the judiciary. A minister’s refusal to implement a High Court order — essentially a standoff between two branches of government — would create a constitutional crisis, making it unclear how the relevant authorities and agencies should act.
The court ruling came following a petition by the Hatzlaha organization demanding that the tenure of two members of the Kan governing council be temporarily extended, since Karhi has refused to appoint new members in their stead.
The governing council cannot function without a full quorum of seven members, and so its policy-setting and oversight functions for the public broadcaster have essentially been suspended.
The council is empowered to appoint senior officials to the public broadcaster, determines its working procedures, set its various policies, and lays out and approves its annual work plan, none of which it can carry out without a quorum.
It is the task of the governing council’s search committee to appoint new members to the council, but that body also cannot function at present since the previous chairman, Moshe Drori, appointed by Karhi, resigned in November.
Drori stepped down due to a High Court petition against his appointment as chairman of the search committee in light of a highly controversial ruling he issued as a district court judge in 2009. In the ruling, which was described as racist and overturned by the Supreme Court, Drori acquitted a defendant of running over an Ethiopian-Israeli woman even though the defendant had pleaded guilty.
In its decision on Monday, the High Court issued a provisional order instructing Karhi to respond to the petition and explain why, if he wants to appoint new members of the governing council, he does not appoint a new chairman of the search committee.
The court also issued an interim order extending the tenure of the two members of the council whose term of office expired pending a final ruling on the petition, or until two new members are appointed to the panel.
“This is in order to allow [the Kan public broadcasting] corporation to exercise its authority in accordance with the law and so that the proper functioning of the corporation not be harmed,” the court added in its ruling, which was issued by Acting Supreme Court President Isaac Amit and justices Noam Sohlberg and Daphne Barak-Erez.
In a furious response, Karhi denounced the court and accused it of usurping authority from the government.
“I hereby inform the honorable court that this interim order was issued without authority and contrary to law. In addition, I determine that there is a constitutional impediment to its implementation due to a serious violation of the separation of powers and the foundations of democracy,” fumed the minister.
“The order is void, nonbinding and meaningless,” he added, while warning “my friends on the left” about “what kind of ‘rule of law’ you are defending, and what ‘democracy’ you are pretending to save.”
Speaking on Radio 103FM, Lapid said that if Karhi did not comply with the High Court order, there was no reason for anyone to comply with his instructions as minister.
“A minister has to follow the law, if he doesn’t follow the law, there is no point in obeying him,” said the opposition leader.
Gantz said in a statement to the press that failure to comply with court rulings is “a black mark in a democracy,” and warned of the consequences to Israel’s constitutional order.
“In such a case, law enforcement agencies must bring him to justice with the utmost severity and speed. Otherwise we will descend into anarchy,” said the National Unity leader.
