Government ordered to respond to petition against new acting head of TV authority

The High Court of Justice orders the government to respond to a petition demanding that its recent appointment of an acting chair for the Second Authority for Television and Radio, a key regulatory and licensing body for commercial broadcasting in Israel, be cancelled.

The petition, filed by the liberal Movement for Quality Government in Israel organization, argues that new acting chair Odelia Minnes does not meet the qualification criteria for the position established by the Law for Government Companies.

Minnes, nominated by Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi and approved in a cabinet vote earlier this month, has neither served in a management position of a large corporation for five years, served in a senior public post, or served in a senior position in the field of broadcasting.

The Movement for Quality Government also maintains that the manner in which the cabinet vote appointing Minnes was conducted violated numerous procedural rules, including bringing her candidacy to a vote without allowing professional officials and the Attorney General’s Office to evaluate her candidacy.

“We are witnessing an alarming trend in which the government systematically ignores the provisions of the law and the professional legal briefs of the legal advisors. The appointment of Dr. Minnes is just one example of this,” says Attorney Ariel Barzilai of the Movement for the Quality of Government.

The Movement for Governance and Democracy, a conservative group, insists however that the criteria for an acting chair are far less onerous than for a permanent chair and that the applicable law is not the Law for Government Companies but the Law for the Second Authority, which requires only that the acting chair be a member of the body’s governing council, which Minnes is.

High Court Justice Ofer Grosskopf orders the government to file its initial response by August 21.