Opposition leader Yacimovich turns down Audi

Labor leader asks Shin-Bet to take away bodyguard too.

By GIL STERN STERN HOFFMAN
Labor chairwoman Shelly Yacimovich 370 (photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
Labor chairwoman Shelly Yacimovich 370
(photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
New opposition leader Shelly Yacimovich made her first move in the post a modest one over the weekend, when she turned down an armored Audi 6 that served her predecessors and cost more than NIS 1.5 million.
Yacimovich wrote on her Facebook page that she would continue to drive the Mazda leased to her when she became a Knesset member. Her message received more than one thousand “likes” in under an hour.
“I do not see any reason to take such an expensive and fancy car,” she wrote. “I can serve the opposition and the public just fine with my Mazda.”
According to the law, the opposition leader is one of the seven most protected people in the country. Yacimovich said in weekend interviews that she had asked Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) head Yoram Cohen to remove her bodyguard.
But Yacimovich will apparently have to get the law changed in order to get the bodyguard removed. With an opposition numbering only 26 MKs, it will be hard for her to pass anything in the Knesset.
Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid raised eyebrows on Friday when he showed up for a parlor meeting in Kfar Saba with a bodyguard. Lapid told reporters at the event that the guard was a friend who protects him at public events and he is not paid.
Former opposition leader Shaul Mofaz gave up the bodyguard and the fancy car when he left his post to become vice premier. On Sunday, he will attend his first cabinet meeting since joining Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s government.