"The Movement for Quality in Government" is the very same movement which took a long break during the tenure of the previous government of deceit and disappointment. Now it has returned with renewed energy against the present elected government.
On its current agenda is the biennial budget which was recently approved and passed. The movement has appealed to the High Court demanding that it halt its implementation on the grounds of it being anti-democratic, irresponsible and illegal. It wants "to restore the power of criticism to the Knesset. This is the first step in obfuscating the division of the powers in Israel."
The same scenery, same scenario. They publicized a ceremonious, joyful announcement in the previous government when it passed their biennial budget in which they wrote, "After years of budgetary asphyxiation which paralyzed the activities of the various government offices out of submission to personal interests of certain elected public officials, the Knesset approved a budget for 21-22, and the country is now able to continue to stride forward. Congratulations to the MKs who displayed accountability and cooperated as necessary to free the country from the budgetary suffocation."
So what has changed since the Benet-Lapid government and the Netanyahu one? The makeup of the government, to be sure.
The movement spokesman hastened to explain that the budget in the times of Benet-Lapid was passed towards the end of the year so that it will operate for only fourteen months, which is plausible. But a present budget for 20 months is one which was approved at the end of the fourth month — and this is considered a veritable democratic destruction!
Incidentally, a biennial budget was approved for 2013-4, 2015-6 and 2017-8, and amazingly enough, democracy did not disintegrate. But this was not during a full rightist government so that they were able to make peace with those budgets, which did not harm the Israeli economy. In his time, Lapid himself was able to pass a biennial budget as Minister of the Treasury. But that was at a time before the ominous expected downfall of democracy!
