Livnat: Netanyahu doesn’t keep his promises

Livnat says Netanyahu has "emotional IQ problem," doesn't know how to appreciate, thank, those loyal to him.

By LAHAV HARKOV
Limor Livnat (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
Limor Livnat
(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
Six months after leaving politics, former minister Limor Livnat aired her complaints about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in an interview this week in Lady Globes.
According to Livnat, Netanyahu was reelected only because “the Left overdid it in an unprecedented battle against him, and it angered Likudniks, young and old.
There was a personal smear campaign against him and Sara [Netanyahu] that inflated every bit of information.
“The whole Left, which fought him relentlessly, did the opposite of what they wanted,” she observed in the interview published on Wednesday.
The former Likud minister admitted that her relationship with Netanyahu had its ups and downs over the years, but said that in recent years it was very good.
Netanyahu, she said, was a good prime minister at some points, but his personality has been his undoing, as opposed to former prime minister Ehud Olmert, who she said didn’t necessarily a do good job, but was likable.
“The problem people have with Bibi… comes from the fact that he has an emotional IQ problem,” she said. “He doesn’t know how to say thank you to people who do a lot for him, he doesn’t remember who’s loyal, doesn’t make sure to keep his promises and is mistaken in allowing worthy people – like [Finance Minister Moshe] Kahlon and [former interior minister Gideon] Sa’ar – to quit.”
Livnat did not hold back in her criticism of Kahlon either, saying she would never leave the Likud to form a party that would compete with it. She also said he was not a good welfare minister, but that people only remember that he brought down cell-phone service prices.
An MK for 22 years and minister for 13, Livnat held portfolios such as education, communications and culture and sport. She announced in December that she would not run in this year’s election.
Livnat told Lady Globes she felt a burden had been lifted when she made the announcement and that she was sick of politics and all the favors she felt she had to do for Likud central committee members and activists in order to do well in the primaries.