Nir Barkat calls to constrain the role of attorney general

Speaking to a crowd of party activists gathered in Tel Aviv, Likud MK and former Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat says he wants to politicize and constrain the role of attorney general.

“We need to split the role of attorney general and turn the attorney general into a position of trust,” says Barkat.

Israel’s attorney general straddles an at-times conflicting line, serving at the top of the state prosecution and as the legal adviser to the government. Barkat says this situation, rare in western democracies, “is delusional.”

Placed in the eighth spot on the Likud list after the party’s August primary, the popular lawmaker sees himself as a potential successor to Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu is currently on trial for three separate corruption cases and has attacked the State Prosecutor’s Office, attorney general, police and media in connection, maintaining his innocence and claiming that the charges against him were fabricated.

“The next reform that needs to be done is in the State Prosecutor’s Office,” Barkat says, adding that the office’s conduct is a source of “sleep depriv[ation].”

“They are unregulated and pose a threat to the system of governance. No one there pays a price for failures, for abusing justice, for persecution, and for injustices that occur against the public and its elected officials, which often end with nothing,” he adds.