Jerusalem – Israel’s president, dogged by rape allegations and calls to step down, sat out the opening of the parliament’s winter session Monday after police recommended he be indicted.
Some members of parliament had threatened to boycott or stay in their seats if President Moshe Katsav took part in the opening-day ceremonies. It is customary for lawmakers to rise as the president, whose post is largely ceremonial, takes his place in the gallery seats reserved for dignitaries.
Katsav, who denies the charges, had insisted he would attend. However, he decided to skip the session after police recommended Sunday that prosecutors indict him for rape and other sexual misconduct charges involving former female employees.
Investigators also recommended to Attorney General Menachem Mazuz that Katsav be charged with tapping the telephones of staff members and using public funds to buy gifts.
Mazuz is expected to make a decision on whether to issue an indictment in two or three weeks. The various allegations carry prison terms ranging from three to 16 years.
The police recommendations gave new energy to a scandal that has kept Katsav as front- page news and the butt of Israeli satire for months after a former employee in the president’s office accused him of forcing her to have sex.
Other women who formerly worked for Katsav stepped forward with allegations of sexual harassment, though police recommended a rape charge in only one other case, that of a former staffer when Katsav was Israel’s tourism minister.
Katsav, 60, a longtime member of the conservative Likud Party with a drab but relatively clean image, says the charges were part of an attempt to blackmail him. He has accused political rivals of seeking to undermine him.
Pundits say the damage had been done and that Katsav, whose job largely is to project the nation’s honor at home and abroad, has little choice but to step down. In Israel, political power rests in the hands of the prime minister.
“The man Moshe Katsav is innocent as long as it has not been proven otherwise. But the man is one thing and the president another,” columnist Nahum Barnea wrote in Monday’s editions of the daily Yediot Aharonot newspaper.
The president’s lawyer said Katsav probably would resign if formally indicted.
