“It’s time to set aside the political machinations that took up so much of my time and to go elsewhere, to focus on nurturing those lousy, counterproductive ideas in the warm environment of my Haifa home.”
Credit: Ofer Amram via Wikimedia Commons
Jerusalem, January 13 – A former minister of finance whose breakaway faction folded back into the ruling party this past year announced today he will not stand for reelection in the coming parliamentary contest this March, and will return home instead to devote more attention to his discredited economic ideas.
MK Moshe Kahlon told reporters Sunday he will step down from his position in the Knesset and go back to his hometown of Haifa to be with his wife, three children, and numerous failed ideas to help Israel’s struggling lower classes.
“I’ve had four years to make my ideas a reality,” he recalled. “Four years of fighting to represent the working families, the young couples, the folks who dream of economic stability but who remain stymied by forces that thwart them at every turn. Four years to take my ideas and apply them in the least effective way, the most misguided way. But it’s time to set aside the political machinations that took up so much of my time and to go elsewhere, to focus on nurturing those lousy, counterproductive ideas in the warm environment of my Haifa home.”
The move comes after Mr. Kahlon’s new Kulanu party fared well in the 2015 elections, resulting in leverage that the longtime Likud colleague Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu exerted to secure the position of Minister of Finance. He had previously held the Communications portfolio, but campaigned chiefly on issues surrounding the cost of living, the housing shortage, and other economic challenges, vowing to insist on the Finance post as the only way to provide relief and to make life easier for Israelis on the economic front. The few decisive policies Kahlon did manage to see through to implementation, however, failed to make a significant dent, and some exacerbated the problems. In 2019 Kulanu, its electoral support only enough for four Knesset seats, folded itself back into Likud, with Kahlon fifth on the faction’s roster.
“I believe I have done what I can in the public sphere,” he continued. “Many of my supporters have urged me to remain in Jerusalem and fight the good fight, and I hank them for their confidence. But other capable souls can pick up where I left off, fighting to empower labor unions that extort the taxpayer; maintain monopolies that keep prices artificially high; and provide inadequate, ill-conceived, ill-timed, and poorly-managed solutions to the housing shortage. So much of that still needs to be done.”
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