Aryeh Deri tweeted on Wednesday his shock at the loss of a Knesset seat by the UTJ (Yahadut Hatorah) party due to the final count of vote being issued by the Central Elections committee. The tweet read: “Shas and UTJ gained an additional 90,000 votes in this election from the previous one. Shas gained 72,000 additional votes and UTJ gained 18,000 In spite of the rise of votes, the two parties still only have 16 seats, which was the same total they had in the previous election in April. I simply don’t understand it. It is insensible and unjust.”

Following the verdict last night by the election committee to transfer the 8th seat of UTJ to the Likud, whose total now is 32 seats, just one behind the Blue and White Party, a UTJ spokesperson said that the party intends to appeal the decision. “The UTJ faction believes that this 8th seat, according to the statistics it has in its possession belongs o the party and not to the Likud. Therefore we are considering submitting a formal appeal.”

The Spokesperson went on to say that the counting of the votes and the finalization of the numbers was decided by the committee based on time constraints, and polling boxes were included and others disqualified from the official count for various reasons. It is due to these considerations that we believe we will file an appeal to further clarify the issue. We believe that in light of the appeal, the truth will be revealed and we will receive the 8th mandate back again.”

*****SIGN UP NOW —- GET YOUR NEWS IN RECORD TIME***** Make sure you are one of the more than 22,000 that signed up to YWN WhatsApp Status to receive news in live time. Click this link – or send a message to 1-888-4-YW-NEWS (888-499-6397) – to see our status posts*****

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)