It is too late for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to change the rules for electing the next president because the race has already formally begun, presidential candidate Shimon Shetreet said in an interview on Sunday.
Likud officials have said Netanyahu would only run if the vote to elect the president in the Knesset is changed from a secret ballot to an open vote. But Shetreet, a professor of law, said the period for electing the president technically began on April 9, three months before President Reuven Rivlin leaves office and the earliest date the election could have been held.
“The rules cannot be changed in the middle of the game,” he said.
Knesset Speaker Yariv Levin must announce a date, together with his deputies who have yet to be appointed, giving at least three weeks’ notice for the election, which must be held no later than June 9. Candidates require the signatures of 10 MKs to run, and the factions are expected to enable their MKs to start signing as early as Monday.
Shetreet already began discussing his candidacy with Knesset members in July, meeting with 107 of the 120 MKs in the 23rd Knesset at least once and 40 of them twice. He has already met with 10 of the 26 new MKs in the 24th Knesset.
“I feel good about my chances based on the one-on-one meetings,” Shetreet said. “I tell the MKs they need a president who can provide depth in every field the president deals with, which I can.”
Shetreet was born in Morocco and raised in a transit camp for immigrants in Tiberias. He won the national Bible Quiz as a teen, earned a doctorate in law from the University of Chicago in just two years and has taught at Cambridge. He still teaches law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem voluntarily, although he is retired, and will soon publish his 26th and 27th books, two-thirds of which he wrote in English.
In his political career, Shetreet served as a Labor MK from 1992 to 1996 and held the religious affairs; science, culture and sports; and industry and trade portfolios. He later served as deputy and acting mayor of Jerusalem.
Shetreet, 75, turned down a seat on the Supreme Court in 1988 when he was 42 and thought he was too young.
“I have the political bug that makes me feel the need to contribute to society and help the public as I have my entire life,” Shetreet said. “Being president is a significant challenge, and I believe the path I have traveled and the experience I have gained give me the tools to succeed, especially at a time when so much has to be fixed.”
Shetreet’s plans for electoral reform include adding 40 MKs to the Knesset, who would be elected in joint regional elections, and enabling mayors to enter the Knesset after two terms in City Hall while keeping their mayoral posts. He would set a minimum term for each Knesset and a maximum of two terms for prime ministers.
In a move that would limit the powers of the president, Shetreet favors giving the leader of the largest faction the automatic right to form a government if the party won at least 35 seats, which in recent years was only accomplished by Ariel Sharon in 2001 and Netanyahu last year.
“It is right to sacrifice the president’s authority to bring about stability,” he said. “If you don’t have stability, everyone gets hurt.”
Shetreet also has a plan for returning Israel to the vision of the state’s founding fathers on matters of religion and state, relations with the Diaspora, its economy, natural resources, Israeli Arabs and other sectors.
Other presidential candidates are expected to include former Labor Party chairmen Isaac Herzog and Amir Peretz, former Likud MK Yehudah Glick, former Labor MK Michael Bar-Zohar, possibly Israel Prize-winning educator Miriam Peretz (no relation to Amir) and singer Yehoram Gaon.