Likud had reportedly promised Orbach a slot on the party’s list and a cabinet ministry if he would vote to dissolve the Knesset.
Two watchdog groups asked Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara on Thursday to examine whether the Likud had made in a legal agreement with rebel Yamina MK Nir Orbach.
A deal with the Likud
Channel 12 reported on Wednesday night that the Likud had promised Orbach a reserved slot on the party’s list and a cabinet ministry in a Likud-led government if he would vote to dissolve the Knesset and bring down Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.
“This is a gross case of trampling the instructions of the law.”
The Movement for Quality Governments lawyer
The Movement for Quality Government wrote Baharav-Miara that the law forbids such agreements until 90 days before a declared election. The group wrote the attorney-general that the Likud had committed a crime by reaching agreements with both Orbach and former coalition chairwoman Idit Silman.
A “stinking maneuver?”
“This is a gross case of trampling the instructions of the law,” the movement’s lawyers wrote. “It requires an immediate criminal investigation of everyone involved in the matter.”
The law was changed in 1991, following the infamous “stinking maneuver,” in which then-foreign minister Shimon Peres tried to overthrow then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and their national unity government.
The left-wing group Darkenu asked Baharav-Miara to clarify that such agreements are illegal even if made in an unofficial handshake deal and to probe the head of Likud, opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu.
“Corruption is unacceptable and law enforcement officials must ensure that a man indicted in three cases does not continue to corrupt the public sphere with illegal offers to members of Knesset to defect from the coalition for a future job,” Darkenu director-general Yair Yaya Fink wrote the attorney-general.