Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government has agreed to hold early elections on April 9, after the ruling coalition appeared to come up short on votes needed to pass a contentious piece of court-ordered legislation.
Netanyahu said his coalition “unanimously” agreed to disband the government and hold a new election.
Coalition faction leaders voted unanimously Monday to dissolve parliament and call early elections for April 9. Elections originally were scheduled for November 2019, but no Israeli coalition in the past 30 years has served out its term. Speculation has been rife for months that the current government would fall, too, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces multiple corruption allegations.
“We seek a clear mandate from the electorate to continue to lead Israel on our path,” Netanyahu said at a hastily scheduled news conference. He gave no specific reason for disbanding the government other than to seek a fresh mandate from voters, predicting that his current government would be “the core of the next coalition.”
The government has been living on borrowed time since Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman resigned in November, leaving the coalition with the thinnest of parliamentary majorities — 61 of the Knesset’s 120 seats. Israeli shares lost ground after Monday’s news, but the declines moderated in the afternoon to more closely track drops in U.S. markets.
It was a stunning Day 1 present for Bank of Israel Governor Amir Yaron, who took office earlier in the day. The shekel was down 0.1 percent against the dollar late Monday afternoon.
Polls have suggested a new vote won’t produce a significantly changed parliament, with Netanyahu projected to win a fifth term — his fourth straight — despite the corruption investigations. The prime minister has convinced his base that he’s the victim of a political witchhunt conducted by leftists and the media to topple his conservative government.
(c) 2018, Bloomberg · Gwen Ackerman
{Matzav.com}
