Justice / The railway station ministry
Haaretz, November 30, 2006
By Yuval Yoaz
More than any other ministry, the Justice Ministry has suffered in recent years from an insufferable turnover, with ministers coming and going at a train station tempo. Haim Ramon put his finger on it in the speech he gave when taking office, just seven months ago, telling senior ministry officials that "this is the fifth inauguration of a justice minister in seven years. Ministerial handovers at that pace harm the government's ability to perform." Since then, there has already been another inauguration - for acting minister Meir Sheetrit.
Moreover, in appointing Tzipi Livni, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is essentially announcing not one, but two, new justice ministers. Cabinet members declare they are waiting for Ramon to return to office, if and when he is acquitted. But not every acquittal will let him walk back through the doors of the ministry.
So formally Livni has only been appointed for one month, leaving us questioning why Sheetrit - who is familiar with the office - didn't just stay on. The conclusion seems to be that even Olmert's circle is not entirely convinced that Ramon will be back, making this an important appointment: not a one-month job until the Ramon verdict, but a minister for the next four years.
But Livni is the only cabinet member of whom "four more years at Justice" cannot be said: while Sheetrit and Isaac Herzog could hold the portfolio in conjunction with their other functions, Livni can clearly not serve both at the justice ministry and as well as Israel's foreign minister. She doesn't even want to.
In this sense, Olmert demonstrated his loyalty to his friend, handing the portfolio to the one member of his cabinet who isn't interested in holding it more than a month. Ramon benefits from this, the public and the professional performance of the ministry benefit less when the cabinet really does appoint a permanent minister in another month. Not to mention the criticism from Attorney General Menachem Mazuz of the "black hole," in which no one held the portfolio for a full week.
The great unknown is what kind of justice minister Livni will be as the sand slips through the political hourglass. Will she take an active stance and, for instance, appoint her kind of Supreme Court justice? From her last stop at the justice train station, we learned that Livni decided to push appointments just when she found the timing to be inappropriate.
