Prime Minister Olmert, despite your obvious shortcomings and your proclivity towards questionably ethical activity, I wanted to believe that you carried at least a modicum of intelligence and a sense of responsibility towards and respect for the office of the Prime Minister, but with each passing day, you are going out of your way to prove me wrong. You, Mr. Prime Minister, are a lame duck whose days in the Prime Minister’s chair are numbered. You have lost both the support and the respect of the nation and even of your fellow party members in Kadima; you have lost your mandate to make critical decisions. And yet, despite all that you have going against you, you continue in your mind-boggling attempts to retain control and throw your weight around, bullying your colleagues in a disturbing portrayal of one-upmanship of which we are all ashamed.
Have you no respect for yourself or the government that you claim to represent, Sir? How do you sleep at night; how do you look yourself in the mirror knowing that every Israeli citizen believes you are going out of your way to demonstrate that not only will you be dragged from the Prime Minister’s office kicking and screaming, but that you are also not afraid to take your entire party down with you? We are no longer your public, and we have lost all faith in your ability to lead. At the very least, we had hoped and expected you to accept this situation that you have created for yourself and would bow out gracefully, allowing your successor to take her rightful place as leader of a transitional government, allowing her to try to prove her worth prior to the upcoming elections. We had hoped that your obvious acrimony towards the Foreign Minister would be put aside for the good of your party, that you would be a gentleman and do what you could to ensure a smooth transition, but clearly, you have chosen to be selfish and petty, to hold on to your seat until the last possible moment. And for what? What are you hoping to accomplish, exactly, upstaging your colleagues and acting like a spoiled, petulant child in the process?
Mr. Prime Minister, you leave behind a legacy of war and a nation reeling from utter loss of faith in the establishment. Your actions have destroyed our belief in the system, they have completely eroded our trust in the state. Thanks to you, the national psyche is bruised and battered, and in a country where citizens cannot agree on anything, you have, almost singlehandedly, managed to unite us in disgust. Clearly, your acts are those of a desperate man, desperate to redeem himself in the eyes of the public, desperate to prove that he can still get the job done. Sir, you cannot, and we no longer want you to continue to try. If you have any respect in you at all – for yourself and for us, you will collect your belongings and go home. Clean up your affairs, Sir, and leave us to clean up ours.
