It is hard to pass laws when an early election looms overhead. Real analysis of bills falls by the wayside and is replaced by short-term electoral considerations. Knesset members change their minds, faction heads scrutinize polls, and important legislation is stalled.
This is what is happening now with bills on limits to freedom of expression, punishments for terrorists, and the issue of ultra-Orthodox military conscription, which has existed since the state was founded.
One bill that has been sucked into the political whirlpool has to do with the president's discretion to name the Knesset member responsible for assembling a coalition after an election, as per Article 7 of the Basic Law: The Government. The spin-loving media is calling it the "Gideon Saar bill," aiming to portray this necessary amendment as a personal matter for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It isn't.
The democratic process assumes that the free will of the people is the supreme source of authority. Every citizen is entitled to express their views through voting, regardless of their intelligence, education, religion, race, or sex. When a ballot is placed in the box, everyone is equal, Nobel Prize laureates and the illiterate alike. Therein lies the beauty and meaning of democracy. On election day, citizens vote for the representatives they want in the Knesset, who will work to implement the platform that earned them the faith of the voters. Any attempt to manipulate election results is one of the worst ways to attack a liberal democracy.
Needless to say, the head of a party is a major element in voters' considerations. Most voters identify parties with their leaders.
Basic Law: The Government contains a loophole that should be closed. The bill is not an attack on the president; it merely addresses the vital need to prevent the will of the electorate from being perverted. The current political situation allows for the president to make any Knesset member responsible for forming a coalition to govern the nation, even though, for as long as the nation has existed, presidents have always given that responsibility to the leader of the party that has won the most votes.
The proposed amendment does not contain any dramatic innovation but merely seeks to ensure that the accepted practice does not change. It serves the will of voters on both the Left and the Right. In a functioning democracy like Israel, it is inconceivable that an absence of legal language allows the will of the voters to be manipulated.
