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Moral issues – corruption in the high windows.
By Yahal Porat
It is not a secret that Israel, as a state, is not as moral as one can hope. Since the early days many were exploiting the new system to work in wrong manners: to find loopholes, to give jobs to friends not on a professional criteria basis, and to fraud when ever possible.
Back in the past that was a norm, which was practiced mostly by Mapai, the Labour party, in order to maintain in power. But as the years went by, many expected that strong existing democracy would mean also moral improvement of the way practicing power.
Unfortunately, it did not happen. Ariel Sharon’s reign was one to remember. Few different allegations were made, involving the Sharon family. The most known two are the Greece island affair and the Annex affair. In both, Ariel Sharon was not brought to court, due to the general attorney decision. Sharon was accused together with Olmert, of helping an Israeli businessman to buy an island, in favour of getting lots of money. The money would help the two to elect in premiers. Not only that but the Israeli business man also hired Sharon’s sun, Gilad, as a special consultant, and paid him few hundred of thousands of dollars, before even doing anything. Sharon claimed he did not know about it, Olmert denied the allegations, and Gilad, Sharon’s sun, kept silence in the interrogations room.
In the second affair, Sharon’s other sun, Omri, Likud MK, was thought to get money from different dodgy companies, against the law. Again, Sharon said he did not know about it, but still got the money that helped him to be elected as Likud’s chair and prime minister. Few days ago, Omry, Sharon’s second sun, was sentence to jail for 9 month.
Those are only two affairs among many more, recently the attorney general announced that Tzachi Hanegbi, former likud and now Kadima minister, should resign immediately, because of allegations he appointed relatives and friends to hold positions in the civil servant sector. And there are more…
But the Israeli voter is not as alert to the issue. Many in Israel think every politician is corrupt, but only the dams are being caught. Certainly, none of the affaires moved any voter to change his mind, as for polls.
It is sad to see the moral issues of daily routines in power breaking down. In the last few years Israel is falling down in the world corruption ranking. By the year 2005 Israel got the score of 6.1 (2004= 6.3) out of 10, ranking only in the 28th place, together with Oman, not far from Uruguay or Barbados, Qatar or Botswana.
Is really not so important? How can corruption affect democratic life?
For more info:
http://www.ti-israel.org/Articles/Article.asp?ArticleID=269&CategoryID=30
http://www.transparency.org/policy_and_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2005
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3219604,00.html
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