Zelekha said he wanted this job in December 2020, when everyone else, as he put it, wanted to be prime minister. Those quotes attach to the party's first run, and nothing in the current campaign restates them.
Who they are
Yaron Zelekha is an accountant and economist who served as accountant general at the finance ministry and later founded a party of his own. He was born in Ramat Gan in 1970 to parents from Iraq; his father Shlomo managed a Bank Leumi branch in Rehovot. He served in Military Intelligence research, then read economics and accounting at Bar-Ilan, where he also took a doctorate, and has headed accounting at Ono Academic College since 1998. He ran the economic division of the prime minister’s office before leaving for business, latterly as a finance director at the Highway 6 concession.
Benjamin Netanyahu, then finance minister, appointed him accountant general. He made government departments pay their tax bills on time. In 2006 he gave the state comptroller information about Ehud Olmert’s conduct in the sale of the state’s shares in Bank Leumi, and was the central witness in the investigation that followed; Olmert denied steering the process, and the file was closed for want of evidence.
Earlier, at the prime minister’s office, he had prepared summaries of reports on the Broadcasting Authority. After complaints that they were distorted, police recommended charging him; the attorney general closed the file for lack of guilt, finding he acted in good faith.
Positions and record
Monopolies: Wants exclusive importers declared monopolies with criminal liability, and the production councils dismantled.
Taxation: VAT down from eighteen percent to twelve over six years, and marginal tax capped at forty.
7 October: Attributes primary responsibility to Netanyahu as head of the system, and points at defence spending falling as a share of GDP.
Where they stand
Holds the party line on every issue.