Having performed well in last month's elections, former Likud minister and Kulanu Chairman Moshe Kahlon looks set to join Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's next government as Finance Minister, but at least one Kulanu associate isn't pleased with the election results.
In an interview with Globes published Monday, one of the directors of Kulanu's advertising campaign in the recent elections, Udi Pridan, expressed pleasure at the party winning ten seats, but was frustrated by the rest of the results.
And the main target of his frustration? Netanyahu.
"What happened in the 1999 elections was supposed to happen again," Pridan argued, when Netanyahu lost to opponent Ehud Barack, "because people were sick of him" and "Israel wanted change."
"In my mind, Bibi is the devil, an evil man, dishonest, a troublemaker, and a schismatic...but because half of the people didn't want to vote for Tzipi Livni, and because social-economic issues were pressing on them, there was always an equality [in polls]."
"But when the Zionist Union climbed to a difference of four seats," Pridan explained, "the mobilization of the right began."
Another target of Pridan's displeasure was the Mizrahi or Sephardic Jewish public, a great deal of whom voted for Netanyahu (who is Ashkenazic) over Kahlon, a fellow Mizrahi.
Pridan blamed that on what he termed Mizrahim's "inferiority complex," in racially-charged comments not likely to go down well with many of the people he insists are potential Kulanu voters.
According to Pridan, Kahlon was not able to achieve twenty seats because, "Mizrahis do not believe in themselves, that someone like them can be a leader."
Instead, he posed, despite their dislike of the "white Ashkenazi," they look to someone like Netanyahu as the only person capable of doing the job
They say, "I want a suit, a cigar, Bibi, English. I do not believe Kahlon can lie to Obama, and I want someone who can lie to Obama," Pridan claimed. "They want Bibi the presenter."
Kahlon, who served successfully as Communications Minister during his tenure with Likud, left the party in 2013.