A law that would make it harder for small parties to get into the Knesset will no longer be part of a larger governance bill, making it easier for opponents to absent themselves from the vote and keep the coalition from getting the absolute majority it needs. “The drama in the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee shows that the coalition is going to have a very hard time passing the [bill] raising the electoral threshold,” said MK Dov Khenin (Hadash). “The opposition is united against it, and the coalition is internally split over this heavy-handed and anti-democratic act,” added.
MK Dov Khenin (Photo: 972 website)
The change was due to a second revote on the matter held Wednesday in the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee. The revote constituted a coup for the opposition that was inadvertently authorized by the committee chairman. A bill to raise the electoral threshold from 2 percent to 3.25 percent, referring to the percentage of votes that a party must win to be allowed into the Knesset, is due to come up for a vote in the Knesset in mid-February. Sixty-one MKs must support the bill for it to pass into law.
Opposition members say the purpose of the bill is to keep smaller political parties, including the communist lead Jewish-Arab Hadash front and Arab parties such as Balad and the United Arab List-Ta’al, out of the next Knesset. The first revote was scheduled for Wednesday at the request of one of the bill’s initiators, MK Ronen Hoffman of Yesh Atid, who wanted to overturn an earlier decision to split the bills into two. The MKs voted 7-5 to keep the bills together. The second revote was requested by MK Khenin(Hadash) and MK Merav Michaeli (Labor) after some of the coalition members who supported raising the electoral threshold had left the room. MK David Rotem of Yisrael Beiteinu, the committee chairman and one of the bill’s authors, allowed the revote, evidently without realizing its full implications. After extreme right MK Rotem gave his okay, the bill’s five opponents on the committee won the vote to make the electoral threshold bill separate. Of the seven MKs on the committee who wanted to keep the two issues together in a single bill, only two remained in the room for the second revote. Realizing his mistake, Rotem announced his intention to demand a third revote. But Attorney Sigal Kogut, the committee’s legal adviser, said the law did not allow more than two revotes on the same subject.
Related:
Hadash and Arab parties: Raising Knesset threshold will backfire on right
Netanyahu & Lieberman agree to raise electoral threshold; Hadash calls move anti-democratic
Association for Civil Rights protests raising the elections threshold
