PM Olmert
Photo: AFP
Olmert waiting for salvation
PM’s associates bemoan Olmert’s low approval rating despite his ‘amazing’ work
The Prime Minister’s Office is filled with hope these days. Ehud Olmert’s people are hoping that something big, dramatic, will happen and put to rest the election talk hovering in the air these days. Perhaps it will be a large-scale operation in Gaza, or escalation in one of the other simmering fronts, or perhaps Iran would be the one that pushes away the threat of elections. It’s unclear what it will be, but officials at Olmert’s office hope that it will be something - a sort of “higher power” that would stabilize the situation and enable the government, in contradiction to most predictions, to complete its term in office.
Even before the publication of the Winograd Commission’s final report, the prime minister’s people estimated that general elections will be held sometimes at the beginning of 2009. It was clear to everyone, including Olmert, that after the current Knesset marks three years in office, Parliament will enter a shaky period. Normally parliaments have been dissolved after three years. Even if Knesset members refused to remove themselves from office before that, after three years the dynamics changed and suddenly they become more trigger-happy. For some reason, Knesset members find it easier to step into an elections atmosphere after three years.
Olmert doesn’t have too many lifesavers, and even those he had are slowly running out. Negotiations with the Palestinians are moving on the axis between “unclear” and “irrelevant”, and officials in Jerusalem admit that 2008 will apparently not be the year of the “big agreement.” Sources at the PM’s Office expressed pessimism this week over the prospects of something meaningful happening on the diplomatic front vis-à-vis the Palestinians, even though the talks seemingly continue.
‘Nobody sees it’
At the same time, on the “southern front” things are becoming more complicated. The fire continues and genuine quiet is not on the horizon. The only thing that plays into the prime minister’s hands for the time being is the weakness of his rivals within the coalition, headed by Ehud Barak. The defense minister has indeed been talking about elections in almost every political speech he delivered recently, yet senior Labor party officials say that at this time Barak has no reason to quit the government.“We need to find the proper pretext,” a senior Labor figure says. “The problem is that such reason does not exist at this time. There is no pretext. Someone who did not quit the government after the Winograd report’s publication cannot quit now.”
And despite this, despite the weakness trap faced by coalition leaders, the frustration at the PM’s Office is great, and it mostly stems from the inability to market Olmert to the public as a good prime minister. Whatever he does or says, regardless of his ability to move things that Ariel Sharon neglected during most of his term in office, Olmert remains unpopular.
By the way, exactly yesterday we marked a year to the prime minister’s famous declaration about being “unpopular,” and it appears that not much has changed since then. The man who managed to overcome Winograd, silence the critics, and keep Bibi Netanyahu on the sidelines is still unpopular.
Olmert’s people shrug, desperate after the endless attempts to sell to the public a prime minister that is likable. “If the public knew what sort of amazing things this man did, they would be stunned,” one Olmert associate sighs. “But there’s nothing that can be done. Nobody sees it.”
