MK Betzalel Smotrich: Finance Minister says Supreme Court cannot invalidate a Basic Law
Preparations are complete for the right-wing freedom rally to be held on Thursday in front of the Supreme Court in Jerusalem. Among the key speakers at the rally will be Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who will address the possibility that the court may invalidate one of Israel's quasi-constitutional Basic Laws.
In a preliminary video for the rally published by Minister Smotrich, he explained that the striking down of Basic Laws would be equivalent to throwing the votes of those who chose the government in a democratic election into the trash.
"The Supreme Court cannot invalidate Basic Laws, the clear meaning of such an action is taking the ballot that we all cast at the ballot box, and throwing it in the trash. When the Supreme Court invalidates Basic Laws - it takes away our freedom, takes away our power of choice, and decides that it is the legislator and not the Knesset. We need our freedom back."
Berale Crombie, one of the leaders of the pro-judicial reform protest movement, stated ahead of the rally: "The Supreme Court is debating Basic Laws in an undemocratic way while trying to hijack and pass the new constitutional revolution and create new precedents.
Instead of curbing judicial activism and taking into account the will of the majority of the people, the Supreme Court is doubling down and attempting to disqualify a prime minister who received 2.5 million votes.
Our call to the Supreme Court is that it not add to the judicial activism that it has taken so much upon itself. It cannot be that in a democratic country, the Supreme Court debates Basic Laws, after all the years in which they explained to us that the entire constitutional revolution of Aharon Barak is based on the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Freedom.”
MK Avihai Boaron (Likud) said: "If 15 Supreme Court judges declare that they are the sovereign power, the people will have to have their say. How exactly will they have their say? I don't want to get there.
I hope we don't have to reach a point where we sit on the bench and decide how we can return the power to the people. I want to hope and believe that the court is smart enough not to say to the people and their representatives: 'You are not the owner of the house here, we live in a democracy that is not a democracy. The 15 judges of the Supreme Court are the sovereign.' The majority of the people decided on a certain law, at the level of a Basic Law.
This is a fence that the court itself put in place to preserve the point of balance between the branches. If the court breaks through this fence, it will uphold our claim that we live in an imbalance between the people and the court, on the question of who is sovereign.”
The rally is to be held ahead of of an unprecedented Supreme Court panel of all 15 judges which will hear petitions against the recently-passed Reasonableness Standard law. The legislation is an amendment to the Basic Laws which reduces the court's ability to apply the subjective 'Reasonableness Standard' against government actions.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/376587S
No comments:
Post a Comment