Sylvia Westall, Bloomberg News

DUBAI
EnerfgiesNet.com 03 27 2023

Things are going from bad to worse for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Hours after he fired his defense minister yesterday for calling for a halt to government plans to overhaul the judicial system, he faced a night of raging street protests that even came close to his home.

Now the country’s main union has started a labor strike that disrupted departures from the international airport. President Isaac Herzog called on Netanyahu to halt the legislation “for the sake of the unity of the people of Israel.”

The plans and uproar over them have unsettled investors long resistant to turmoil. Local markets and the shekel have been swinging between losses and gains as the path of the legal changes remain unclear, as does Netanyahu’s future.

Key ministers and aides as well as his personal lawyer were urging the prime minister to pause the revamp, which would give politicians a dominant role in selecting judges and enable them to overrule the top court.

Ministers on the right of his government, which was forged just a few months ago, are threatening to break up the coalition if he does.

Caught between those who helped bring him back to power and an outburst of public rage, Netanyahu faces no easy choices. 

Rocket threat | North Korea test-fired two short-range ballistic missiles, adding to its barrage in recent weeks as Pyongyang protests joint military exercises by the US and South Korea. Kim Jong Un’s regime hasn’t commented on the latest launch, but it’s been seeking new ways to deliver nuclear attacks on the US and its two most important allies in Asia, Tokyo and Seoul.

Losing ground | Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally has moved ahead of a group of parties backing French President Emmanuel Macron in voting intentions, a survey by pollster Ifop for Le Journal du Dimanche newspaper showed. The increasingly violent protests over Macron’s decision to raise the retirement age without a parliamentary vote risk scaring off the investors he spent the past six years courting.

Strongarm politics | Leaders across the world have often balked at implementing tough reforms that come along with an International Monetary Fund loan, afraid of being penalized at the ballot box. Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina isn’t one of them. Unlike leaders in Sri Lanka or Pakistan, Arun Devnath writes, she’s widely expected to win a fourth term in elections expected by January — not least because many of her opponents are behind bars or ensnared in legal cases.

And finally … The Scottish National Party will today announce a replacement for Nicola Sturgeon as both SNP leader and the head of Scotland’s semi-autonomous government. Sturgeon’s decision to stand down marks a new direction for the SNP, which has won all elections to the Scottish Parliament since 2007 yet failed to persuade a majority of voters to back its core policy of independence from the UK in a 2014 referendum. As Katharine Gemmell and Andrew Atkinson report, Scotland’s new first minister must govern a nation still deeply riven and no nearer to resolving its constitutional future.

— With assistance by Muneeza Naqvi, Alan Crawford and Gwen Ackerman

bloomberg News 03 27 2023