Kahlon: We Don’t Have an Agreement with Anyone

Kulanu party chairman declares he will not consider which party has more seats when choosing who to recommend as PM.

Arutz Sheva

Moshe Kahlon, head of the Kulanu party, clarified on Tuesday that he will not take into consideration which party has more seats after next week’s election when he chooses who to recommend for Prime Minister.

“We have not made an agreement with anybody,” he told Channel 2 News, adding, “We will not consider the question of who has more seats, we will recommend the candidate who will deal with the cost of living and housing prices.”

In recent days there have been reports that Kulanu was planning to join a post-election negotiation bloc with Yesh Atid, Yisrael Beytenu, or any other party.

Kahlon told supporters Sunday that his party is interested in only one “deal, a deal with the Israeli public. Don’t believe the lies that some are pushing, as they are designed to influence your vote.”

“None of the party leaders in this election are willing to answer the difficult questions,” Kahlon said. “No one has an answer as to why there is no competition between banks, no one can tell us why there is no competition in the food industry. They are stealing millions of shekels from the pockets of Israelis and no one says anything. All we hear about all day is Iran, ISIS, and Congressional speeches.”

Kahlon’s comments on Tuesday followed polls which found that the gap between Labor and Hatnua’s “Zionist Camp” and Likud is at the largest yet.

According to the poll, the “Zionist Camp” comes in at 25 seats, while Likud flounders at 21. The findings widen the divide from an earlier poll on Tuesday, which gave Labor 24 versus 21 to Likud.

Despite gaining strength in the polls, it remains unclear how Labor leader Yitzhak Herzog would be able to form a stable coalition, as he would need to include parties that have already declared they would not join a coalition with one another.

Kahlon last week placed an obstacle in Herzog’s way when he declared that he would not be part of a coalition that includes parties that are “not Zionist”, a reference to the Joint Arab List.

Similarly, Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Liberman has declared that he will not join a coalition of which the leftist Meretz party is part.