Knesset Passes Governance Law

Amendment to Basic Law on the Government limits number of government ministers, raises electoral threshold.

Gil Ronen,

Knesset members
Knesset members
Flash 90

The Knesset passed Tuesday morning the amendment to the Basic Law on The Government known as the “Governance Law,” with 67 in favor, and none voting against or abstaining.

The law limits the number of government ministers to 18 and stipulates that all ministers will have portfolios.

It also raises the electoral threshold required for a party to enter the Knesset to 3.25% of the total votes cast in national elections.

Opposition MKs decided to boycott the vote and were absent from the plenum. They held an "alternative debate" in the Knesset's Negev Hall Monday and criticized what they said were undemocratic moves by the government, which is passing three controversial laws this week.

Representing the government, Minister Avigdor Liberman summed up the debate on the Governance Law by calling the Opposition's behavior “a show of hypocrisy and crybabyish behavior.”

"Every time I heard Buzhi,” he said, using the nickname of Opposition head and Labor leader MK Yitzhak Herzog – “I looked for a handkerchief to wipe away the tears. He is always crying and complaining and the hypocrisy here is obvious. All of the same people who are suddenly so fearful for the fate of Israel's democracy, presented proposals citing the urgent need for raising the threshold, in the past. Anyone who enters the Knesset portal can read the speeches by the Opposition spokesmen, explaining why we do need to raise the threshold. We are still at a lower [threshold] percentage than many countries in the enlightened world.”

"It is time for the establishment of a government that can lead a clear agenda and not one compromise on top of another,” he spelled out his vision. “A government that can make decisions and is not busy performing maintenance chores on the Coalition all of the time.”

Liberman summed up and called the Opposition “an Opposition of the terror organization representatives, of the post-Zionists, of the crybabies.”