Meridor's resignation is an opportunity to lead a process of dismantling the budget department, and leading the much-needed reform in our Ministry of Finance - of the citizens of Israel • Opinion

• Shaul Meridor

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  Oren Ben Hakon

The news of the resignation of the head of the budget department in the Ministry of Finance, Shaul Meridor, should be encouraging. The rule of clerical power, which manifested itself from the appointment of senior division officials in seemingly tailored centers - according to former finance director Shai BaVad - to the blocking of the mobility of talented young Israelis to key officials in the treasury and later in the Israeli economy - may have been halted.

The situation we have discussed in previous articles, in which officials de facto determine government policy and the pace of implementation of the state budget and actually directly affect the family budget of Israelis, has caused a tremendous intoxication of power of officials and in fact an inconceivable illusion that the sovereign and government ministers are their employees.

This array, backed by immense media power, could not help but reach a dead end. This tension is not new, and everyone remembers "the fugitives" - the nickname used by Yitzhak Rabin during his second term in relation to the employees of the budget department in the Ministry of Finance, after the director general of the Ministry of Finance, Aaron Fogel. This time the explosion was inevitable.

There is no great absurdity in the management of the state budget by a budget department official, as if there is no government and elected officials above them. A government that has been elected to formulate and implement economic policy, and when necessary, to inject money into the economy - encounters a checkpoint: officials who do justice to themselves and even act in a way similar to the elected officials.

The big break is in the decision of the finance officials to create a new scale of values ​​for the country. The seven bureaucrats knew how to give the benefits to the strong systems - and weaken the weak.

Israel Katz can and should act fearlessly: Meridor's resignation is an opportunity to lead a process of dismantling the budget department, which is the strongest monopoly in the economy, and leading the much-needed reform of our Ministry of Finance - of Israeli citizens.