Lapid: Incoming coalition can’t pass Deri law as 4 MKs are in conflict of interest

Outgoing Prime Minister Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party assails the legislation pushed by the incoming government that will allow Shas party chief Aryeh Deri to serve as a minister, and says it has asked the Knesset’s legal adviser to prevent four MKs from voting on the bill due to their “clear, inherent and blatant” conflicts of interest.

Yesh Atid argues that Deri himself, expected incoming prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Likud MKs David Bitan and Haim Katz — who have all faced criminal indictments — should be disqualified from voting on a bill that makes it easier for convicted people to become government ministers.

If this argument is accepted, the incoming coalition’s 64 votes would be reduced to 60 in the 120-member Knesset, while a majority of at least 61 is needed to change a quasi-constitutional Basic Law, which Netanyahu’s bloc is attempting.

The amendment would explicitly say that a person given a suspended sentence in the last seven years can serve as a minister. Currently, Deri’s suspended sentence for tax fraud earlier this year complicates plans to give him the interior and health ministries.

Netanyahu “is weak, Deri knew he would give in as he always does. So instead of breaking the law, Aryeh Deri is changing the law. They are so power drunk and arrogant that they forgot one thing: The new coalition includes four people who are prohibited from voting on this law, because they are in conflict of interest,” Lapid says, calling Deri a “serial criminal.”

The letter to legal adviser Sagit Afek is sent out by Yesh Atid faction leader Boaz Toporovsky.