Olmert Cabinet, Comprising 4 Parties, to be Sworn in Today
Excerpt;
Olmert will take post of prime minister and will lead a coalition of Kadima, Labor, Shas, and the Gil Pensioners Party, with 67 MKs.
Knesset Approves 31st Government by a Vote of 65:49[Listing of Cabinet Ministerial Appointments]
Russian, Arab MKs: We Won’t Back Gov’t
Olmert’s Cabinet Takes Shape, but Questions Remain
Olmert Names Mofaz Minister of Transportation in Next Gov’t
Peres Gets Key Job in Olmert’s Cabinet
Itzik to Assume Knesset Speaker Post
Opposition to MK Itzik’s Appointment as Knesset Speaker
Full Text;
The artist associations representing screen directors and screenwriters have appealed to Attorney General Menachem Mazuz with a request that Knesset Member Dalia Itzik be prohibited from taking up her appointment as Knesset Speaker under Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s planned government. The appeal claims there are serious suspicions that Itzik violated the public trust and was guilty of corruption during her term as minister of communications under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, which should prevent her from taking up any public post. The appellants further called for a criminal investigation of the Kadima party MK, formerly a leading member of the Labor party.
In the letter to Mazuz, which was also sent to the State Comptroller, the associations point out that Itzik allowed private companies to sponsor a government communications industry function. Afterwards, the associations claim, one of the sponsors donated 100,000 dollars to Shimon Peres’s primaries election campaign, while Itzik was Peres’s campaign manager. That same sponsor was a member of a steering committee simultaneously headed by Itzik.