The Winner Still is Ehud Olmert

It has been 236 days since Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced that he would not run in the Kadima leadership race to replace him. This decision should have taken away his moral authority to lead the country and shift to a caretaker roll until he was replaced.

When Tzipi Livni took over as chairman of the party he refused to step down as Prime Minster. Instead of taking over as Prime Minister she was forced to form her own government. Taking advantage of her difficult situation she was unable to form a government and elections were called 3 months later. President Shimon Peres gave the nod to Benjamin Netanyahu to have 6 weeks to from a new government. The original deadline is at midnight. A two week extension has been granted as Labour will be deciding on Tuesday if they wish to join the government. In the unlikly case that Netanyahu fails to form a government, Livni would be given the oppurtunity or elections could once again be called.

During this time the world has been a fairly busy place. The world economy has collapsed with governments around the world printing hundreds of billions of dollars to keep the ecoonomy moving. Russia invaded the Ukraine. The United States elected adn installed a new President. The Canadian government called elections, installed a new government, progoued parliament and passed the budget which has already been passed by the Senate.

Olmert has tried to create his own legacy and tie the hands of the next govrenment to his vision for the future. He activly tried to get a peace treaty signed with Syria. He sent the IDF to Gaza to try to stop missle attacks that he had been ignoring. He tried and failed to release Gilad Shalit who has been a Hamas prisoner for 1001 days. He also failed to pass the budget for the fiscal year that began on January 1st.

Olmert's role as Prime Minister can be described as a failure. It is time to stop with the legacy building and move on to the government that is looking into the future. Hopefuly everything will fall into place so that after Tuesday a new governernment that will be effective can be formed.