Yair Shamir: Likud-Beytenu merger lost parties votes

Knesset candidate says merger did not accomplish goal of forming faction big enough to form a stronger coalition.

By LAHAV HARKOV
Yair Shamir 370 (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Yair Shamir 370
(photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
The result of the Likud-Beytenu merger is the opposite of its stated goal – to have a faction large enough to allow it to form a stronger, more stable coalition with fewer parties – Yair Shamir said on Monday.
“I don’t have a good answer about the results we see today. We lost seats. I wasn’t part of the decision,” Shamir said, in reference to the merger. “If we get few votes, we will build the coalition with a wide variety of parties and will have to compromise.”
Speaking at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, Shamir listed some of the reforms his party seeks to make in the system of government, including giving the prime minister more power, raising the election threshold, which is currently 2 percent, and decreasing the number of no-confidence votes in the Knesset.
Shamir also repeated Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s promise that in the next government Likud Beytenu will take the Housing and Construction Ministry, which belonged to Shas for the past four years, along with the Interior Ministry.
“I think we need the Housing Ministry, and the Interior Ministry also needs to be refreshed; they’ve belonged to the same parties for years,” he stated. “If Shas will be partners in the coalition, they must be ready to part with [the ministries], so we can bring a change that will benefit the Israeli public.”