Inability to get along with Minister of Finance Yaakov Ne'eman is not why director-general Shmuel Slavin is leaving the Finance Ministry. He is leaving because Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu couldn't get along with him. Ne'eman's only fault was that he failed to stave off the icy blasts driving in Slavin's direction from the Prime Minister's Office. This had been going on ever since former Minister of Finance Dan Meridor resigned and since Slavin sided with Meridor in his argument with Governor of the Bank of Israel Yaakov Frenkel.
The Prime Minister's Office does not love Slavin. Not that this was ever a secret. But things were kept within bounds thanks to certain character traits shared by the Prime Minister's Office's senior economic officer, Moshe Leon, and the Director-General Ministry of Finance, Shmuel Slavin. Both abhor the idea of washing their dirty linen in public. Not seeing eye to eye, they refrained from mud-slinging. Neither had much respect for the other, but both kept quiet about it.
Slavin preferred to work within the Ministry of Finance, and leave the stage to Ne'eman and Leon. Leon preferred to work through Budgets Department head, David Milgrom. The Prime Minister's Office said Slavin had no managerial talent. The Ministry of Finance said Leon had no understanding of macro-economics.
Then came the budget debates, and the Prime Minister's Office said Slavin was out of it, was going home to sleep at eleven p.m. The Finance Ministry said Slaving was taking part in all debates and sleeping barely two hours of the twenty-four. Slavin, in fact, conducted the talks with the NRP and the ultra-orthodox, (other than Shas, most of whose demands had already met with satisfaction). But once they had obtained from him as much as he, with the consent of his minister, was prepared to give, they went to the Prime Minister and demanded more. Slavin, to be sure, was not present.
The atmosphere wasn't always so chilly. From the moment the Netanyahu government went into orbit, Slavin was in line for the job of Finance Ministry Director-General. Netanyahu picked him for the job well before agreeing to install Meridor as Minister of Finance. The friendship between Netanyahu, Slavin and Meridor goes a long way back. The working partnership commenced during the Yitzhak Shamir government, in which all three held senior office. Netanyahu was a deputy minister in the Prime Minister's Office, Meridor was Minister of Justice while Slavin was economic adviser to the Prime Minister. At that time, they all got along well.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prefers a political-professional. A professional, that is, who is also politically aware. Slavin was supposed to be such a man. Slavin, indeed, has another advantage, in the shape of a skull-cap. Netanyahu believed this to be a winning combination of the professional and the opportune. This was an appointment that would ensure that the Finance Ministry operated in such a way as to further the outlook and interests of the Prime Minister's Office. But Slavin failed to come up to expectations, permitting the professional to prevail over the politic. Netanyahu didn't like it.
What Netanyahu wanted, and still wants, is to control the Finance Ministry. Initially, there was talk of appointing Yaakov Frenkel as Minister of Finance. The portfolio was actually delivered to Yaakov Ne'eman. In both cases, the object was to install a minister who, lacking political backing, would be utterly dependent on the Prime Minister. Slavin was supposed to realise that his job was to be an intermediary, a general manager, subject to the decisions of a Board of Directors, represented, in this instance, by the Prime Minister's Office. The next Director-General will have it spelled out for him.
Published by Israel's Business Arena January 18, 1998