Q&A: A Politician as a Murderer
A Politician as a Murderer
Question
Do you think that a politician who unequivocally declared that he would do a certain thing and then did the opposite deserves to be in prison, since he stole my vote, which in effect represents my identity and my opinion? If he stole 100 shekels from me he would be prosecuted for it, so why not when he steals my vote?
That is what Dov Halbertal argued
Answer
There is something to that. Although sending someone to prison is a legal determination, and the court has ruled more than once that there is no criminal cause of action here. I think that is mainly because you can never really prove it, since one can always argue that things look different from here than they do from there, and that reality changed (we joined only because of the coronavirus, a state of emergency, etc.).
This really is problematic, but it turns out that the public is not all that bothered by it. People laugh a bit, get a bit annoyed, the ratings in the polls drop a little, but then they move on and keep voting for the same people again and again. So apparently the vote really is for the person and not for his ideas (if he has any at all). In short, in all this we are all to blame. Not the politicians, and no one else.
Which politicians did something contrary to a large enough minority of their voters? I don’t know many examples of that. In my opinion, until proven otherwise, they really do represent their voters (the vote is for ideas, and the person really does succeed in weighing them correctly according to the wishes of his voters). For example, in the current government, according to the polls at the time of the decision, Gantz made a decision that had enough support from his voters. Orly Levy, Amir Peretz, and Shmuli are less interesting because there is a government even without them. Barak’s joining Netanyahu’s government also, in my impression, matched the wishes of his voters (by the way, as far as I’m concerned, I would appoint Barak prime minister tomorrow. And Einat Wilf as foreign minister).