Deputy Attorney-General for Constitutional Affairs Raz Nizri cleared the way on Thursday for government officials to make decisions and appointments during the current election period. Usually decisions and appointments would be held off until after the election because transitional governments are viewed as having less authority and legitimacy, but Nizri ruled they should be waived given that these are the third elections to be held within a year. His ruling comes after Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit authorized Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan to make permanent appointments for the office of police chief and prisons chief, having held Erdan at bay with temporary appointments for the last year. As in Mandelblit’s recent letter to Erdan, Nizri emphasized that waiting for longer than a year to make such decisions was too long, and that the general rule limiting transitional governments’ powers could be overruled on a case by case basis. Nizri said that government officials must still consider a transitional government as having less authority, and must still work hard to avoid any conflict of interest emerging from an election season decision. But he gave officials the green light to push the envelope further than in ordinary circumstances where only one round of elections had taken place. With elections set for March 2, it is likely that by the time a new government is formed, a series of transitional governments will have been running the country for close to 18 months.
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