Knesset speaker Ruby Rivlin, sent today a personal letter to the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and elucidated him that the criticism in the interview to the newspaper Ma'Ariv, are impersonal but idealistic . In the letter Rivlin indicated that he is sorry that the relevant disagreement between the two of them was interpreted as personal, when its all about divisions of opinions between head of authority of the legislator to the head of the authority that execute.
In the interview to Maariv that will be published on Friday, Rivlin attacked the PM with the harshest critique: "The prime minister thinks that the Knesset is unnecessary ,He does not respect the discretion of the Knesset and the public reps that sit there. There is in me great acrimony on Netanyahu. He thinks that the chairman of the Knesset must serve the coalition. I thought that three of the last years that obligated him to be in Knesset when we lost the elections taught him how much power there is to democracy when you play according to the game rules. But when he returned to be prime minister, he again forgot the force to respect the parliament. On account that he was never a legislater, the democratic games doesn't mean to him nothing".
Relations between Rivlin and Netanyahu had steadily declined since Rivlin was voted in as speaker three months ago. The situation reached new proportions last week after Rivlin was said by party members - including Netanyahu - to have caved in to opposition demands on the series of government sponsored bills known as the "governance laws."
After a number of lawmakers criticized and ridiculed Rivlin for his decision - as well as for his own well-known opposition to the legislation - the poor relations reached a crisis point after the speaker blasted the prime minister in an interview with Ma'ariv.
When Netanyahu was called by the paper for a response to Rivlin's statements, he immediately called off a meeting with the Knesset speaker, hours before the two were supposed to meet.
Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz weighed in on the dispute, threatening to crush Rivlin's hopes of becoming the next president by sponsoring legislation that would forbid a serving Knesset speaker from running for the post. Katz did not stop there, but suggested that should the need arise, the Likud would sponsor former foreign minister David Levy or Chief Tel Aviv Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau as its candidate to succeed Shimon Peres.
