Neither Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nor Blue and White Party leader Benny Gantz could form a government after a two-month race. We are in the last leg of the marathon in which there are 21 days to form a government, with potentially any Knesset member able to lead the charge. Will all hell break loose? And what crazy scenarios could transpire? Before we go to the crazy (and unlikely scenarios), it’s important to nail down the basics. As of Thursday morning, anytime in the next 21 days, a 61 MK majority is now entitled to submit a written request to President Reuven Rivlin to give the role of forming a government to a specific MK, who agrees to it in writing. Rivlin then is charged with giving the mandate to form a government within two days. Once Rivlin gives the MK the mandate, this MK would have 14 days to form a government. If either during the 21 days, no 61 MK group puts forward someone to receive the mandate or if someone given the mandate fails, the law says that the president must immediately inform the Speaker of the Knesset. Once the president has informed the speaker, they and the country are obligated treat this notice as if the Knesset has voted to disperse itself which brings about elections to be held on the last Tuesday before the expiration of 90 days from when Rivlin was told that no government can be formed. Those are the basics – now the “what ifs.” What if Rivlin takes an active or campaigning role to form a government? Could he use his status as president to undermine Netanyahu within the Likud or Gantz within Blue and White in order to help form a government since the two of them seem unable to close a deal? Could he help engineer unexpected splits in other smaller parties to form a mishmash coalition that would never have happened under normal circumstances? While the answers to these two questions are both “yes” – anyone in the Knesset can do this and Rivlin has no special constitutional powers beyond any other MK’s, other than his status as president, that gives him an edge for achieving a strange new coalition.
In fact, indications have been that Rivlin feels burned by the failure of Netanyahu and Gantz to work out a deal after he took an activist position in suggesting a compromise between them regarding the rotation for prime minister, and how to deal with Netanyahu’s legal problems. Asked to discuss wild scenarios, Hebrew University rector Barak Medina said that one possibility could be that 61 MKs decide to increase the time for forming a government beyond the 21 days. Though this is a gray area, he said that 61 MKs theoretically have the power to change aspects of the electoral system and timing as long as they do so before the 21st day – or before new elections become automatic. Earlier this year, some parties tried to see if they could form a government mid-election season and the Knesset legal adviser vetoed the idea as illegal since the public was already promised elections. However, even if it would seem problematic to extend the 21 days while in the midst of coalition forming negotiations, Medina thought this might survive a legal challenge in the courts as long as 61 MKs voted on the extension before day 21. He said that bigger changes than extending the time would only be allowed by the courts to impact a later election. In other words, the current political parties have their legitimacy from voters based on the assumption of what the current electoral system is. Had the voters known the system would change, they might have voted differently. This prevents a direct election between Netanyahu and Gantz, or to say that the leader of whichever party wins the most votes automatically becomes prime minister – at least until a later election. IDC Herzliya professor Adam Shinar rejected most of these scenarios to make changes to the electoral system as anti-democratic.
He also said that even if a third election were not ideal, if that was what is needed to break the political deadlock then it could be said to be democracy working things out – however messy it might look. Neither Shinar nor Medina thought that Rivlin or Speaker of the Knesset Yuli Edelstein could simply stall after 21 days and decline to move forward with elections in order to get MKs more time to negotiate. Medina said that if either of them stalled, that Central Elections Committee chief Hanan Melcer could step in to schedule an election day. Thus, in all likelihood, the only two paths available are a new government in the next 21 days or a third election. But the country has never been in this situation before, so no one knows what might happen next. Hold on tight.
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