I am always amused at the politicians that introduce laws to curtail a specific persons efforts.
The newest law being proposed is the "Yair Lapid Law" by which journalists looking to go into politics would, if the law is passed, have to go through a cooling off period between their journalism job and their officially entering politics.
The law gets dubbed by the targets name, in this case Lapid, because everyone knows the whole objective of the law is not the greater good, but to deal with that specific person.
We have the Deri law, the Mofaz law, now the Yair Lapid law, among many others through Israel's short history. Most of the time they are directed so that the person in question should not be able to run for Knesset.
The laws get real names, but they are known, and introduced to the public, by these names.
The legal system should not be abused by politicians for the purpose of keeping their seats just because they are afraid of a new person who is on the rise. And it looks so childish.
From what I saw, the focus of the proposed law is that journalists who are looking to enter politics should not be allowed to use the public airwaves (that they don't pay for) to promote themselves.
ReplyDeleteSeems pretty sensible to me.
Then how about a law which prohibits the use of public airwaves for someone to promote themselves for public office?
ReplyDeleteThe proposed law as per the way I saw it explained (http://www.nrg.co.il/online/1/ART2/118/631.html?hp=1&loc=43&tmp=4370) is that there be a cooling off period.
ReplyDeleteThat was really beside the point though. The point was about politicians taking advantage of the system to target potential rivals and create laws to that effect.