Degel HaTorah and Agudath Israel, UTJ, submitted this past Monday a petition to the High Court to annul the elections to the Jerusalem Rabbinate scheduled for the 27th of Tishrei, as was planned by the Rabbinate election committee over a week ago.
The petition submitted by attorney Raanan Ben Zohar supplements one submitted by them two months earlier against the new regulations for the elections of municipal rabbis, especially against the clause according Minister Banet the right to control the votes for a quarter of the body electing municipal rabbis throughout the country.
The previous petition was a general protest against the body of regulations while the present one deals specifically with the scheduled elections to the Jerusalem Rabbinate. This one is also against Mayor Barkat and against the municipality itself.
In it, the UTJ party argues that the one who was accorded one quarter of the authorization of appointing the rabbis from within the voting body is, in effect, controlling the entire elective body, and therefore, it demands that Minister Banet annul the choice of the twelve representatives under his control within the voting body on the grounds that he publicly announced his support of Rabbi Arye Stern, which makes his choice a political and self-interested one, invalidating it to begin with since it is obvious that he appointed them with the prior knowledge that they would support his candidate.
The petitioners further substantiate their plea with the argument that the chareidi public is also not represented equitably according to their presence in the city amongst those twelve people appointed to the voting board by Banet, which defies the electoral power and balance in the municipality. On the other hand, the Dati Leumi public, which is much smaller in Jerusalem than the chareidi public, was given twice as much representation than its counterpart and much, much more than it deserves vis a vis its size in the Jerusalem population makeup.
