TLR 186- All Change – Part 1

August 27, 2018

 

This issue will extend over two separate sections, both focused on the theme of impending changes of persona occupying senior positions, in most cases the top slot in a particular organization or hierarchy.

 

The fact that so many top jobs are “in play” is, to a large extent, coincidental, especially with regard to those requiring a formal appointment process. However, the problems that have emerged in the process of selecting, vetting and approving many of the potential job-holders are sufficiently widespread to confirm that the procedure itself requires review and repair.

 

In addition, the sheer quantity of new faces and, potentially, new brooms, opens the way for significant changes in policy across a broad range of public-sector organisations and their activities, including the IDF, the police and many government agencies – notably the main financial regulatory agencies.

 

Yet, beyond the slew of appointments and appointees, looms another source of change – the ballot-box. Local and municipal elections will take place on October 30 this year, while a general election will follow within twelve months – but most probably much sooner.

 

The democratic process will deliver change that will extend from specific individuals – mayors, Knesset members and ministers – to political parties and, most intriguingly, to the way power is distributed across and among ethnic and religious sectors and between different age-groups. These are wide-ranging, long-term trends that mostly develop beneath the surface, but occasionally they emerge into view via electoral or bureaucratic processes.

 

Yet for most subscribers to this newsletter – as for everyone involved in the Israeli economy and its financial sector in particular — it is the immediate question of who will be the next governor of the central bank that is by far the most pressing and also the most important. It is also the most difficult to answer.

 

This issue, therefore, whilst representing half of the wider discussion headlined “All Change”, is devoted solely to the imbroglio of the change of Governorship. The next issue will, perforce, briefly consider all the rest, thereby laying the groundwork for subsequent analyses of the elections.

 

In terms of the usual sections of The Landau Report, the discussion that follows of the governorship falls primarily under the rubric of Section C: Macro-economics. However, as will quickly become apparent, in fact it overlaps considerably with Section B: Domestic Politics .

 

Contents

 

Part 1: Political Appointees

 

1. The Governor of the Bank Of Israel

 

1. The Chief of Staff of the IDF

 

1. The Commissioner of Police

 

1. The Commissioner of Capital Markets, Insurance and Savings

 

1. Other heads of Treasury divisions

 

1. The Civil Service Commissioner

 

1. The Supreme Court

 

 

Part 2: Elected Politicians

 

1. Local government: Mayors, councilors, parties

 

1. Central government:

 

1. The general election of 2019

 

1. The Finance Minister

 

• The Defence Minister    The Prime Minister

 

1. Other ministers