Reelection may constitute the same type of bribery for which the premier now faces possible criminal prosecution, a case in which Netanyahu is alleged to have received positive media coverage.
Jerusalem, March 26 – Israel’s Attorney General cautioned citizens ahead of parliamentary elections that a ballot for the incumbent prime minister’s party could fall under the definition of an illegal gift to a public official.
Chief Prosecutor Avihai Mandelblit, whose office intends to indict Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on various corruption charges, released a statement Tuesday morning advising the electorate that voting the premier back into power may constitute the same type of bribery for which the latter now faces possible criminal prosecution, a case in which Netanyahu is alleged to have received positive media coverage.
“Israeli voters must keep in mind that the act of placing a ballot for the Likud Party in the April 9 elections may constitute bribery,” Mandelblit declared. “Citizens must not assume that the secret ballot provides license to violate corruption statutes. The police have been advised of this point, and I have recommended that they place an officer at every voting booth to observe who places a Likud ballot in the envelope.” Bribery of a public official is a felony that carries a maximum sentence of ten years imprisonment.
A spokesman for the prosecutor dismissed the question whether the law bars votes for other parties as well. “Don’t change the subject,” admonished Lair Yapid. “We are discussing Netanyahu, and anything else is whataboutism. The prosecution’s goal is to undo the 2015- I mean the prosecution’s goal is to enforce the, what do you call it, the law. Stop bringing in irrelevancies.”
Analyst Bentzy Gann seconded the spokesman’s point. “Mandelblit knows what he’s doing,” he stated. “If the Attorney General decides only a vote for Netanyahu constitutes bribery, whereas voting, for, to give a totally random, hypothetical example I just pulled out of thin air, Blue and White, say, would be just fine – well, more than just fine, but I’m getting ahead of myself. We have to trust the professional legal judgment of the guardians of our democracy.”
“Now, if the prosecutor were to decide in the end not to indict Bibi,” continued Gann, “that would be a different situation, because we can’t trust the so-called guardians of democracy when they do things of which I disapprove. I mean, we wouldn’t want to end up like the US, where a three-year investigation into Trump’s collusion with Russia amounted to nothing. We would want to save ourselves the embarrassment of not finding wrongdoing despite so much effort.”
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