It was a strange finance minister who this week took the Knesset
rostrum: a cynical, biting Beiga Shohat evidently bent on heading off
trouble before it started. But instead of explaining Saturday night's
drama, he took to lashing out at his Likud critics. The minister of
finance invoked the government's right to break into the agenda,
utilizing the rostrum to deliver an unfair attack. His victims, as he
was well aware, were precluded from fighting back due to the debate on
his announcement being adjourned until next week. And he resorted to
personal invective instead of sticking to the point.
Humiliating one's critics is not a substitute for presenting a
convincing argument. In a serious discussion, one does not produce
off-the-cuff excuses for slashing the budget just a week after getting
it approved, by claiming that the economy under the Likud government,
supported by Dan Tikhon and Ariel Weinstein, had had worse things to
suffer. Criticism levelled at the budget deficit cannot be brushed off
by quoting inflation figures dating from the 'eighties. It is the
traditional refuge of those currently in office to eschew reality and
avoid dealing with control blunders in budget execution and defective
situation assessments. Only in talking to laymen can one cite a low rise
in the index as making up for the dangers of the swelling deficit in the
balance of payments.
There is also a degree of humbug in this drawing of irrelevant
comparisons with historic inflation. In this country, the cost of
living increment will invariably prevent mass impoverishment. Meanwhile,
Shohat's economic methods have reduced more souls to below the poverty
line than did Eridor's or Modai's. And while Shohat was able to boast
that under his tutelage one does not hear of mortgage-takers staggering
under the steeply rising burden, he failed to explain the political
logic behind his agreeing to breach the relative quiet by the proposed
axing of the housing ministry's budget.
So arrogant and overbearing was the performance staged by Beiga in
Knesset, one would never know he had had his face slapped with a vote
of non-confidence against him at the government's table. He seems not
to have had time to digest his new status, after surviving that vote
by the skin of his teeth, solely thanks to the prime minister. What
Peres was seeking, first of all, was to extricate himself from the mess
he had gotten into, on the assumption that there would be only a handful
of nay-sayers.
Beiga has not matured in the past year, since the caper whereby he
got the government tied up in knots with the stock exchange tax. He is
still the same infant that was abducted by the "Fogels" of his ministry,
and has still not grasped the fact that not all that glitters in the
economist's eye is gold to the politician. In politics, timing is
everything. It's like driving - being right is not enough. You also need
to be smart.
But Beiga was once more caught behaving like a greenhorn driver. By
slashing ministerial budgets behind the backs of the ministers, he
attacked the image they had of themselves as a serious team of
decision-makers. All this and the increase of gasoline prices too, in
an election year yet, and Beiga may be found to have injured the Labour
party itself.