A true believer makes his stand
In an exclusive interview with the ‘Post’, Yuli Edelstein doubles down on his decision to resign and to buck the High Court – ‘It’s a question of the future of the independence of the Israeli parliament’
This was not the week to envy Yuli Edelstein. Edelstein, who has been speaker of the Knesset for the last seven years, was at the center of a constitutional crisis the likes of which this country has never before experienced, a crisis that struck at the very core of how the country is governed.
And while Edelstein may have triggered the crisis by refusing to hold a vote to elect a new Knesset speaker – as a majority of 61 Knesset members demanded – it is just the latest in an ongoing saga over which branch of government has supremacy: the legislative, judicial, or executive.
In an unprecedented move, Edelstein resigned on Wednesday as Knesset speaker, rather than abide by the High Court of Justice’s order to hold a Knesset vote. His detractors, and they were loud and passionate, said he was undermining the country’s democracy and perhaps placing it on the road to autocratic rule. His supporters, equally loud and no less passionate, cast him as a hero finally standing up to creeping judicial tyranny.
“There has never been such an occurrence in this country where a leadership figure publicly and defiantly refused to uphold a court order, saying that his conscience does not allow him to carry it out,” High Court of Justice President Esther Hayut wrote in a decision late Wednesday night ordering a Knesset vote on Thursday for a new speaker.
That ruling also slammed Edelstein for failing to abide by a court order, saying that if he – a symbol of the state – fails to abide by its orders, then why should ordinary citizens feel themselves obligated to follow the law?
“I want to say loud and clear to every Israeli citizen, we all should obey the law,” Edlestein said in a telephone interview with The Jerusalem Post, explaining his position.
“If I was ever caught doing something wrong, including speeding, I would never say that I should not obey the ruling – not just a ruling of the Supreme Court, but even the ruling of a traffic or small claims court,” he said.
Asked, however, if this was not exactly what he was doing, he replied with an emphatic and drawn out “No.”
“The ruling was not based on any law. I didn’t break any law; no one is claiming I broke any law. The claim is that I should obey the High Court that decided to run the Knesset instead of the speaker. It’s as simple as that. I could not do that, because it is a precedent. And, by the way, it is not just a question of a separation of powers; it is also a question of the future of the independence of the Israeli parliament.”
Edelstein said that the manner in which he acted was in accordance with the procedures and bylaws of the Knesset, adding that the court’s written decision ordering him to hold a vote for the new speaker was not based on law or legal precedent, but was what he called a “public statement.”
To the argument that the Knesset speaker must accede to the majority in the parliament and hold a vote as the majority demands, Edelstein
said that oftentimes the speaker does not accede to majority rule in the Knesset, and that parliamentary procedural matters are the purview of the Knesset speaker, and not the court.
“All of us like to talk about checks and balances,” he said. “But we have to understand that in the Knesset, the speaker is the check and balance. Many times in the last seven years the majority – a significant majority – demanded that I should not let the opposition speak during a particular debate, or limit it to a very limited time.” But, Edelstein said, he did not listen to those entreaties.
“The speaker does not obey the majority,” he said, adding that this is how the speaker remains independent and is not turned into a rubber stamp.
By interjecting itself into Knesset procedure, Edelstein warned, the court has now opened the door to involvement in committee debates as well. He envisioned a situation where if the chairman of a committee, in order to get a government ministry to cooperate with it, decides – as is often the case – not to put an item on the agenda, an item that is important to a particular minister, the attorney-general can now appeal to the court, which can then order it, “in the name of the public interest,” to put the
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