
Michael Pu'ah, a close confidante of Moshe Feiglin and a member of the Likud Elections Committee, railed against the election process in the Likud, after it emerged that Feiglin would not achieve a “realistic” position - among the top 20 - on the Likud list.
Pu'ah attributed Feiglin's exclusion from the list to the direct intervention of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who, he told Arutz Sheva, has long been looking for ways to “dump” Feiglin.
“Instead of a 'celebration of democracy,' as Netanyahu is portraying it, this was a farce of democracy,” said Pu'ah. “I walked out of the vote counting in the middle of the night, after it emerged that Netanyahu had 'fired' observers from the vote count process,” with no one supervising the voting process.
As a result, “there is no connection between the truth and the results of the primary. We will probably never know the truth, but I do not believe the results they are telling us,” said Pu'ah.
According to Pu'ah, Netanyahu justified removing the observers to Judge Menachem Ne'eman by saying that it was unfair for observers from some factions - like Pu'ah and Feiglin's Manhigut Yehudit - to be present at the vote counting when observers from others were absent.
“Netanyahu called up the judge in the middle of the night and twisted his arm to agree to this, in violation of all the promises he made to me and others.
“Anyone who acts in this manner has made it clear that he is not interested in accurate results,” said Pu'ah. “By the time we got a chance to make our case heard, it was too late. Who knows what went on for the two hours when there were no observers in the counting process?”
Pu'ah did not say if he would challenge the results of the vote, or take other action to invalidate the results.
Writing on his Facebook page Thursday, Feiglin said that he “owed a great deal of thanks to the many supporters, donors, and volunteers who joined with me, in a spirit of true self-sacrifice, to advance the ideas that we are promoting.
“I embrace you all, and I promise you that despite the dark shadow on the proper procedure of these elections - and whatever the final results - we will not stop fighting for our principles, and continue out loyal service to the nation of Israel,” he added.