No pardon for president

It was touching to wake up this morning and see how Yosef "Tommy" Lapid is concerned about the status of the president, and as usual shows contempt for "the feminist witches." It's always good to have someone to blame.

I try to understand how can it be that the former justice minister, who's supposed to know what's going on at our courts, could even come up with such a disgraceful idea like guaranteeing a pardon in advance.

Is it indeed feminists who have an interest in seeing Katsav indicted? Do men object to sex offenders spending time in jail? What about the public interest and value of equality, which is so important in our legal system? And if we're handing out pardons already, why stop with Katsav?

I suggest that the next president pardon Ofer Glazer because he's wealthy, Hanan Goldblatt – should he be convicted – because he's a wonderful actor, and so forth.

In a country where judges characterize the sexual offences phenomenon as an epidemic that should be fought with full force while severely punishing the criminals, a former minister of all people – who apparently feels a little neglected and is thirsty for some media attention (and is possibly toying with the idea of running for president) – calls for pardoning a person who claims that he is innocent.

It appears that as a minister, Lapid did not devote time to reading verdicts. Had he done so, perhaps he would have seen the calls for placing such criminals behind bars for a lengthy period of time.

We suffer greatly from corruption

As the person entrusted with maintaining law and order, Lapid is certainly the first to know that the country suffers greatly from corruption by elected officials – corruption that is financial, public, and also sexual.

In order to be able to look at ourselves in the mirror one of these days, we cannot – even if someone may think that we want – to go easy on offenders. We proceeded as usual following the Weizman affair, and look where we are.

The time has come to tell elected officials: No more. No more exploitation of the power and authority given to you. No more appointments of close associates, no more shady deals to help out relatives at the expense of the country, and no more to "letting one's hands travel". We cannot afford to do this to ourselves, and we're much more important than a president in handcuffs.

The writer covers the legal arena for Ynet