The caretaker Cabinet convened for the first time today to try to unravel a mesh of legal complications arising from last week’s coalition crisis, It is purely a Labor Alignment Cabinet. Absent from today’s session were the two Independent Liberal Party ministers, Moshe Kol and Gideon Hausner, who resigned only hours before Premier Yitzhak Rabin submitted his government’s resignation to President Ephraim Katzir last week.
Also missing were the National Religious Party ministers dismissed by Rabin–Yitzhak Rafael and Zevulun Hammer–and Yosef Burg who resigned when his colleagues were forced out.
The status of these five ministers has become the subject of legal actions which Justice Minister Chaim Zadok explained at today’s Cabinet meeting. State Attorney General Aharon Barak has obtained an order nisi challenging Kol’s and Hausner’s resignations. Another court order issued at the request of two private attorneys–Zalman Segal and Eliezer Steinlauf–questions the validity of Rabin’s ouster of the NRP ministers. The latter were dismissed on grounds that they had failed to support the government on a motion of no-confidence.
COURT RULING AWAITED
According to the law, the dismissal of ministers on those grounds becomes effective “from the day” the government informs the Knesset of its action. The resignations of the NRP ministers were demanded by Rabin at the opening of last Sunday’s Cabinet meeting. Rabin informed the Knesset on Monday morning and he resigned himself shortly before midnight Monday.
According to the two lawyers “from the day” means as of midnight, and, they argue, the NRP ministers were members of the Cabinet at the hour Rabin resigned, Since the law stipulates that members of a caretaker Cabinet cannot resign or be dismissed, the NRP ministers are, in the view of these lawyers, members of the caretaker government.
Although Kol and Hausner resigned from the regular Cabinet, the law says that a minister’s resignation becomes effective only, 48 hours after it is submitted. Therefore, according to Barak, the ILP ministers are technically members of the caretaker regime from which they cannot resign. Both cases await a final ruling by the Supreme Court.
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