Political ego costs mandates: Lessons that leaders of new parties must internalize | Adv. Uriel Lynn
If we want to preserve the democratic decision, we must ensure that voters' votes are not lost due to the lack of a merger between lists, and that Knesset members do not resign from their faction in exchange for benefits.
The government of change was toppled by three Knesset members: Merav Michaeli, indirectly, when she refused to run on a joint list with Meretz — a loss of three mandates; Idit Silman and Amichai Chikli, who resigned from Naftali Bennett's Yamina faction and transferred power to the Likud.
The Knesset Committee defined Chikli as someone who resigned from his faction. After a legal battle, the District Court in Jerusalem decided that Chikli is not considered a defector from his faction, and thus the way was paved for him to join the Likud faction in the 25th Knesset and win a ministerial position. It is worth noting that the law in principle aims to prevent a situation where an elected Knesset member acts against the position of his faction in exchange for benefits. The law imposes a series of sanctions on a member who resigns from his faction and does not resign from the Knesset shortly after the time of resignation. The most important of these is the prohibition to join any of the factions that were in the Knesset during his term in the next elections.
From here, several operational conclusions are required on the eve of the next elections, if we want to preserve the democratic decision. The first conclusion concerns the electoral threshold, which currently stands at 3.25% of all valid votes. A list that passes the electoral threshold will win at least four mandates. A significant point is the loss of the votes of voters who voted for a list that did not pass the electoral threshold. This loss may determine the results of the entire election.
For this reason, a loophole was created in the Knesset Law. It allows several parties to submit a joint list to the Central Elections Committee without harming their independence. These parties can split after the elections into separate factions according to their weight in the joint list. The condition is that the joint list submitted to the chairman of the Central Elections Committee a version of an agreement detailing the party affiliation of the candidates in that list. A party that does not have absolute certainty that it will pass the electoral threshold risks that if it does not join a strong list, it may lead to a loss of votes and cause real damage to the block to which it belongs, as happened in the case of the non-merger between the Labor and Meretz lists.
In the next elections, new, weighty lists will run, which Israeli politics needs for the sake of refreshing the face of the Knesset. These new lists will recruit candidates without internal elections. Some of these candidates are already expressing themselves in the media with great importance, and it can be observed that they greatly exaggerate their electoral contribution. The leaders of the new parties must ensure the prevention of the renewal of the phenomenon of 'Klotarism' — selling the mandate in exchange for personal benefits. They must find a wise legal way according to which the elected Knesset member will not be able to resign from his faction and disrupt the democratic decision.
And another important matter: the precedent in which Naftali Bennett managed to serve as Prime Minister while being backed by an unfaithful faction of six Knesset members is a dangerous precedent. This may have been necessary at the time for the establishment of the government of change, but it is certainly not so today. The pretentious internal scrambling within the opposition block around the question of who should be the next Prime Minister is ridiculous and unnecessary.
Whoever heads the largest party within the opposition block is the one who should be the opposition's candidate for Prime Minister. The only test is the democratic decision.
