In Midnight Coup, Kabotinsky Ousted as NLP Chair
TEL BIDZHAN — The chair of the National Liberal Party, Jonathon Kabotinsky, has announced his resignation today, after an eight hour long meeting of the party’s leadership council, marked by dramatic moments bordering on the Shakespearean.
Kabotinsky’s announcement came after weeks of internal strife at the upper levels of the party, most notably in relation to the National Liberal Party’s coalition agreement with the Beiteynu Tax Party and the Democratic People’s Party. The agreement, which placed the ostensibly libertarian party in cohort with the socialist Democratic People’s Party and the center-left Tax Party was anathema to some members, particularly the intransigent Yeudish Caucus, which Kabotinsky was an ardent member of.
However, despite Kabotinsky’s and the Yeudish Caucus’ concerns, the coalition agreement, termed the grand coalition by supporters, passed with unanimous support from the party’s membership in the Knesset. In order to rectify the concerns of the party’s unyieldingly libertarian leadership with centrist elements in its Knesset delegation, Kabotinsky and the party’s three vice-chairs called a meeting of the party’s leadership council and the party’s leadership in the Knesset.
That meeting saw Kabotinsky’s ouster at the hands of centrist elements in the leadership council. Moreover, what was meant to be a show of unity between the party’s leadership in Tel Bidzhan and its MKs in Yishelem was marred by remarkable scenes of dissension which revealed the true depths of the party’s divisions. In shocking vignettes that played out live on national news, the National Liberal Party began to tear itself apart along battle lines drawn years past.
Embattled NLP Vice Chair Aron Pinsker (center) is escorted out of NLP headquarters by police
First came the news from party headquarters that the leadership council had barricaded itself within the party’s executive boardroom and voted to remove two of the party’s Vice Chairs, Ivrit Blumenfeld and Aron Pinsker, from office. Upon their refusal to resign at the leadership council’s request, they were forcibly removed from the building by police.
The party’s Knesset delegation, emboldened by the leadership council’s removal of its Vice Chairs, voted to disband the Yeudi Caucus by a 14 vote majority. Separately, the leadership council initiated proceedings to begin votes of confidence against the five former members of the Yeudi caucus. Minister of Internal Affairs Elazar Rabbinowitz applauded the move, calling it a, “victory for centrism, a victory for the third way, and a victory for Beiteynu.”
Finally the leadership council executed its coup de grâce against its ailing right flank, voting 5-4 in favor of removing party chair Jonathon Kabotinsky. He resigned from his post and the Knesset soon after. However, Kabotinsky would not go quietly, decrying the vote as a, “leftist sham...designed to prop up a puppet cabinet hell-bent on depriving the yeudis of their rights,” in a rambling, hour-long speech on the floor of the Knesset before his resignation.
The party will soon replace Kabotinsky, and the votes of confidence leveled against the former Yeudi Caucus members will likely fail, granting this new, centrist leadership a firm grip on its Knesset delegation. Regardless, this incident has larger implications for the party’s standing, both in the eyes of the electorate, and in its own MKs.