Spotlight on the News: Splitting Kadima

According to the Jerusalem Post, Netanyahu has made significant progress in convincing a faction of Kadima to split away and (re)join the Likud. As to be expected, while unnamed sources claim it's all but a done deal, named sources, such as Kadima MKs Marina Slodkin and Yaakov Edri, say that there is nothing in the works. Time will tell who's right.

At the end of the article, there's an interesting quote:

"Bibi is the only prime minister who is busy with taking apart the opposition instead of taking care of the problems of the country," Ramon said. "The prime minister's people keep selling political reporters the story, but there is no chance it will happen. This government will come apart a long time before Kadima will."

I find the quote interesting because it's attributed to Chaim Ramon, the Yoshev Rosh of the Moetsa of the Knesset's largest opposition party, Kadima. As any Israeli knows, the primary goal and objective of any opposition party is to bring down the government (or to weasel a way inside the government - sometimes I think it's just a matter of a coin flip)*. IOW, the #1 priority of a large percentage of our lawmakers is to obstruct the smooth functioning of the government and to throw the body in which they serve into such fundamental disarray that new elections would be required.

So if I understand Mr. Ramon's reasoning, the routine SOP for the opposition is unseeming for the ruling party. The opposition is entitled, in fact expected, to exploit any chink in the government's armor to bring it down. The weapon if choice is a crowbar is to be inserted in every crack in the coalition's foundation. But the government must sit idly by and wait for the inevitable to happen.

Mr Ramon's reasoning is so very odd that I admit that I'm at a loss for words to describe it any further. Suffice it to say that perhaps it is indeed for the greater good that he is in the opposition.


* By way of contrast, if you'd ask the "leader of the opposition" in the US (if such a function actually existed) what his/her #1 goal was for the rest of the current term, the answer would be some variation of: "to pass legislation that's good for my constituents and the citizens of the United States of America."