Ha'aretz explains why former Askenazi Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau should not be elected President of Israel:
There are no special skills required for the position of president of the state, but it is appropriate for the head of state to express in his character and his record the values to which the state aspires and not those according to which it is being run in this insane time. …[T]he Knesset that will elect the president, is aware of the complaints of sexual harassment and the allegations of misconduct that have accompanied his public career for years.
Rabbi Lau is a charismatic personality who charms some and is repellent to others… For years Rabbi Lau illegally received payments for performing marriages while he was on the public payroll, both as chief rabbi and as rabbinical courts president. Despite having declared his renunciation of this practice a decade ago, he has continued this unacceptable behavior even in his present position as chief rabbi of Tel Aviv.…
To this I can add that while chief rabbi Rabbi Lau illegally charged speaking fees to the many diaspora-based organizations that wished to hear him. Those fees were paid into "non-profit" organizations controlled by Lau. No payment, no speech. I have heard but cannot prove those "non-profits" employ members of Rabbi Lau's family and his close friends. It would be as if Israel's Foreign Minister charged speaker's fees to United Jewish Communities or the American Jewish Committee and used those fees to fund companies that employed his family.
Can a man this ethically challenged be the president of the State of Israel? It is already a shame on all the Torah stands for that Rabbi Lau was chief rabbi and that he currently is Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv. But, as haredim and, increasingly, Modern Orthodoxy proves, stealing, fraud and other forms of theft are no barriers to rabbinic power – especially in a state laced with corruption.
This is not only a shanda fer da goyyim, it is a shanda for Jews who, raised in civilized countries like America, learn to eschew theft, fraud and stealing and respect honesty. Why do these normal Jews distance themselves from Israel and from "Yiddishkeit"? Perhaps because both are closely associated, not with honesty and kindness, but with dishonesty and hard-heartedness.