Knesset legal adviser Eyal Yinon, addressing High Court judges as they review a petition against the closure of the Knesset and the speaker’s attempt to prevent a vote to oust him, says the appointment of a Knesset speaker who could potentially remain in the opposition would be highly problematic.
Current speaker Yuli Edelstein has asserted he has a right to put off a vote on the identity of the next speaker until a government is formed following the March 2 election.
Yinon appears to back him up, saying appointing a speaker now “could harm democracy,” since if the eventual government does not include the speaker’s faction, the coalition would have difficulty bringing its proposals to a vote in the plenum.
Knesset legal adviser Eyal Yinon at a meeting of the Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee, February 23, 2016. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
“We’ll have a crisis every other day of opposition factions trying to foil the government. It will be impossible.”
He says that without knowing what the government will look like, appointing a Knesset speaker ahead of time is akin to “planting a bug in the system, and that too constitutes harm to governance.”
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