Elected officials do not compete for the title of "Most Disciplined." Not because they are ungrateful. Not because they're all traitors. Simply because most people have a certain amount of personal pride, and they don't think that their entire role in life is to speak on behalf of their masters.
Take, for example, Netanyahu. When he was a deputy minister, he supported an opposition bill that instituted direct elections for the prime minister. He explained that it was an important change to the system of government that would prevent the need for strange maneuvers to ensure that a given person was elected prime minister because the people would vote for him or her directly, and the Knesset could hold a no-confidence vote in special circumstances only. The Likud, which was in the final months of its term in charge, was staunchly opposed to the bill because it saw the legislation as an attempt by Labor to create a situation in which a charismatic Labor candidate would be elected, even if the Likud had a majority in the Knesset. Netanyahu – rightly, the way he saw it – believed that the Labor bill opened up possibilities for him to win the support of the public in the future, even if the Likud had fewer supporters.
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The issue of direct elections for the prime minister was one of the hottest on the political agenda. I opposed it because I worried that the system would detract from the big parties and give more weight to personalities than to party platforms. The fighting within each party didn't stop until the vote, but two parties called for "faction discipline," including punishment for any MK who voted against the party's official stance on the issue.
Tension was running high ahead of the bill's second and third readings, which took place on March 18, 1992, three months before the election (held under the old parliamentary system) that put Labor back in power. The Likud voted against the bill, and Netanyahu was one of the few members who broke faction discipline. And he did so not as a regular MK, but one who was serving as a deputy minister – a deputy minister in the Prime Minister's Office, no less, when Yitzhak Shamir was leading the opposition to the bill.
The result was 55 in favor to 32 against. Netanyahu was very proud of himself. His faction did not punish him, either before or after the election. It also didn't stop him from being elected party leader, and we can assume that the law paved the way for him to become prime minister.
In the summer of 1999, when Ehud Barak formed his government, he asked Professor Yuli Tamir – a rising star in the field of philosophy – to serve in his government as a "personal appointment." Yuli had already undergone her political baptism by fire in the Peace Now organization, and was greatly admired in liberal circles. Many people welcomed Barak's unexpected decision to name her immigrant absorption minister, even though she was not a Knesset member. She made an important contribution to the government and its decisions, but one day I saw her in the Knesset, looking glum. I asked her what had happened and she said that she had voted against Barak in a meeting, and after it was over, he scolded her, saying, "I invented you!"
Yuli was very appreciative of having been appointed as a cabinet minister, and it's true that she had no political power behind her that could have advocated for her if Barak hadn't taken the initiative. But he appointed her because he thought that she would make a major contribution, not so she would do his bidding for the rest of her political career. He appointed her because she was an independent spirit, and once she was in office, yelled at her for her spirit of independence.
I don't know MK and former minister Dr. Yifat Shasha-Biton, and I assume that my positions and hers are very far apart, but her staunch stand as chairwomen of the Knesset Corona committee stems from the fact that she was unwilling to negate herself before the party steamroller and unwilling to be a puppet in the hands of Netanyahu and his people. Without people like that, from both the Right and the Left, the Knesset will be a political show that makes its decisions based on how loud the applause is.
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