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Olmert ‘Happy’ Barak Did Not Quit Government, by Gil Hoffman (Jerusalem Post)
Excerpts;
“There is a lot of work to be done, and I am happy we will do it together,” Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in response to Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s announcement, Sunday afternoon.
Earlier, Labor chairman Barak said the party will remain in Olmert’s government despite the conclusions of the Winograd report.
“I’m going to continue to function as the defense minister because I see the challenges ahead of us – Gaza, Hizbullah, Iran, Syria, as well as the improvement of the army and the political echelon,” Barak said during a press conference before the weekly cabinet meeting.
Barak said that although the Winograd report was “severe” and had personal and moral implications, he would deal with them in the future. “I know that I might pay a political price for staying in the government,” he added.
“I remember well what I said in Sdot Yam, but the situation today is different,” Barak said.
The Labor chairman was referring to a promise, made in May during a press conference in Kibbutz Sdot Yam, to quit the government after the final Winograd report is released. “[The report] requires personal conclusions,” Barak said at the time. “Olmert must seek personal conclusions and resign, as Dan Halutz and Amir Peretz did, each in his own way. If Olmert does not [quit] by the full report’s publication, we will have to end our partnership with him and work to establish a new government in the current Knesset, or alternatively, to set a date for elections.”
Labor MK Eitan Cabel expressed his disappointment with Barak’s decision.
“Barak needed to show leadership and quit the government – a necessary move following the severe results of the Second Lebanon War,” said Cabel.
Likud also blasted Barak’s decision to remain in the coalition.
“As expected, Barak has run away from his responsibility,” a Likud spokesperson said in a statement. “Barak is assisting the leadership that according to both the Winograd Committee and the public has failed and he prefers his political survival to the good of the country.”
Meretz Chairman Yossi Beilin called Barak’s decision “shameful” and a “severe mistake.”
Barak went back on his word, for a change. Is anyone surprised?
In a related background report by Hoffman, he writes of Barak’s now broken promise to leave Olmert’s coalition;
In the speech, he called upon Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to resign, yet expressed interest in serving as his defense minister. He gave an ultimatum for Olmert to quit by the end of the May Labor primary, but he later delayed the deadline to the publication date of the Winograd Report in a speech he made, in June, to earn the endorsement of MK Ophir Paz-Pines.
“[The report] requires personal conclusions,” Barak said. “Olmert must seek personal conclusions and resign, as Dan Halutz and Amir Peretz did, each in his own way. If Olmert does not [quit] by the full report’s publication, we will have to end our partnership with him and work to establish a new government in the current Knesset, or alternatively, to set a date for elections.”
Barak recently admitted to one of his confidants that he wished he could retract the statements he made at Sdot Yam, which he never intended as a promise, and which made him the focal point of media attention after the release of a report investigating a war in which he played no part. He is currently looking for a way to maintain both his cabinet seat and his credibility.
The Sdot Yam statements most likely did not change any votes in a Labor race that tipped in Barak’s favor due to the endorsement Ayalon received from unpopular incumbent Amir Peretz. Sdot Yam was the original sin that has clouded Barak’s tenure in the Defense Ministry the same way that appointing Amir Peretz defense minister was the original sin that has haunted Olmert’s premiership.
OLMERT AND Barak share the same goal now of ensuring that the government lasts until at least the beginning of 2009, but for different reasons.
The prime minister wants to reach an agreement with the Palestinians by the November deadline, initiate an election that would be held three months later and run on a platform of implementing the deal that could attract votes away from Labor and Meretz.
Barak is convinced that Olmert will fail to reach a deal with the Palestinians. It is important for him that Israeli voters see that happen, because it would vindicate him for his own failures in peacemaking when he was prime minister.
In short, Ehud Barak has yet again shirked governing resposibility and the national interest, for his own political motives, and is therefore at least as inept, corrupt and incompetent a leader as is Olmert. They both must go!
It is also interesting to watch how the leftist Meretz party jumps on the bandwagon calling for Olmert’s ouster while yet still waiting in the wings to support Olmert’s give-away to Abbas from outside the coalition in any Knesset vote. One would think that the right thing for Meretz to do would be to at least abstain, on principle of Olmert’s unfitness, from voting on any so called “peace” document. MB