Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana on Sunday declined a High Court of Justice proposal to hold a repeat election for state comptroller, according to a notice filed on the Knesset’s behalf.
The notice said the proposal, raised by the court at the end of Thursday’s hearing, had been conveyed to Ohana. It added that he decided not to hold another vote for the position, citing arguments made in the Knesset’s preliminary response to the petitions and during the hearing.
“The Knesset has already had its say,” Ohana wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
Justices to decide on intervention
The decision returns the case to the High Court panel of Deputy Supreme Court President Noam Sohlberg and Justices Gila Canfy-Steinitz and Ruth Ronnen, which indicated on Thursday that it intended to issue a conditional order focused on whether the secrecy of the ballot had been compromised.
A conditional order would require the respondents to explain why the election should not be canceled, and might result in another hearing. It would not, by itself, invalidate Rabello’s appointment.
The petitions challenge the June 3 vote in which attorney Michael Rabello, a longtime lawyer for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was chosen to succeed State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman.
The initial ballot ended with retired Supreme Court justice Yosef Elron receiving 60 votes and Rabello receiving 57, leaving both candidates one vote short of the 61 required for election. A subsequent ballot was halted and restarted amid controversy over several Likud MKs documenting their votes behind the curtain.
Rabello wins final vote
Rabello then won the final vote by 61 votes to 57.
Petitioners argue that the recordings breached the legally required secrecy of the ballot and turned the election into a political loyalty test, preventing MKs from voting freely and without pressure to prove how they voted.
The Knesset and Likud have denied that there was evidence MKs were instructed to photograph or film their ballots. During Thursday’s hearing, Knesset representative attorney Yitzhak Bart said that any such instruction would be unlawful and could affect the validity of the election, but maintained that the petitioners had not proven one was given.
At the end of the hearing, Sohlberg said an “undesirable cloud” hung over the vote and that some of the ballots appeared “problematic on their face.” He proposed that the Knesset repeat the process through a “clean and proper procedure,” while making clear that the court was considering an order only on the secrecy issue.
The Movement for Quality Government in Israel, one of the petitioners, criticized Ohana’s decision, saying, “Anyone who refuses to vote again in a clean process admits that the first vote was tainted.”
The petitions also raise concerns over Rabello’s longstanding professional ties to Netanyahu, Likud, and state bodies. However, the panel indicated that it was less inclined to intervene in the appointment on conflict-of-interest grounds at this stage, suggesting that those concerns could be addressed through a future conflict-of-interest arrangement.
Rabello is expected to take office when Englman’s term ends at the beginning of July, unless the court intervenes.
