Coalition partners worried over Netanyahu’s ‘dithering’ on key election pledge

“We don’t understand what’s going on with him,” a senior member of the emerging coalition tells Israel Hayom after incoming prime minister seeks to swear in government without written promise to reform judiciary.

By  Amir Ettinger and Yehuda Shlezinger, ISRAEL HAYOM

With Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu set to form a coalition with right-wing and Haredi allies, there is growing discontent among his partners over what they say is a reluctance to promote legislation that would empower the legislative branch to override the Supreme Court in certain cases.

Netanyahu and the Haredi-Sephardi party Shas are at loggerheads with the far-Right Religious Zionism Party and the Haredi-Ashkenazi United Torah Judaism, with the former group seeking to put off any major initiatives on judicial reforms, while the latter two demanding this be cemented into the coalition agreements prior to the swearing-in of the government later this month.

Netanyahu also wants to have the government take office preferably without detailed coalition agreements so as to allow a greater room for maneuver, but this has been countered by a demand to commit to a specific set of programs prior to the swearing-in, chiefly among them the legislation on judicial reform.

“We don’t understand what’s going on with Netanyahu and his dithering on this,” a senior member of the emerging coalition told Israel Hayom. “We don’t want to have every detail incorporated into the agreements but there are key themes that must be put in writing so that it is clear that it would be on the government’s agenda during its term in office.”

The source further warned that “there is a great concern that Netanyahu doesn’t want to move toward the judicial reforms we all seek. He has not talked about it in his victory speech and is not overly enthused about having it inserted in the coalition agreements. He hasn’t even announced that Yariv Levin, who has a set of proposals to reform the judiciary, is his preferred choice for justice minister. The legislation to override Supreme Court decisions is a key election pledge and we are not going to budge on it.”

 Some on the Right fear that if the judicial reforms are not announced in writing at the start of the term, any demand to move forward in this regard later would be interpreted as undermining the coalition’s stability.