Friday, May 05, 2006

It's the intentions, stupid

The new Israeli government has signed in. How does it look?

First, we have 25 ministers, and no deputy ministers. With 66 coalition members (yes, *that* number) there are 2 ministers per every 5 people. Olmert says the government is not too big because there are no deputy ministers, but it doesn't takes much to remember that before Barak changed the law it stated that there can be no more then *18* ministers. That is in a country with 7 million people. US government is quite content with 14 ministers serving 300 million people, thank you very much. Expenses aside, it does not even matter what is the size of the government as long as there is solid logic behind every ministry. Is there? Lets see...

1) Ehud Olmert - Minister of Social Welfare
Yes, he is that too, in addition to being prime minister. Just in case anyone forgets who is the champion of the poor. Be careful Mr. Olmert. Instead, people might blame you for a thing or two. Like prices going up on bread, for example.

2) Shimon Peres - Minister for the Development of the Negev and Galillee
Mr. Peres needed a ministry, doesn't matter what it is. So, let there be ministry of development of negev and galillee. Why not? Maybe next American president Mrs. Clinton can make the first man of the state, Mr. Bill Clinton, secretary of development of Alaska.

3) Yitzhak Cohen - Minister (responsible for the religious councils)
I hope Mr. Cohen is a responsible man. If he proves himself, maybe next time we can merge his ministry with the one responsible for chess clubs.

4) Rafi Eitan - Minister (responsible for pensioners)
When an entire age group gets it's own minister, something *must* be wrong with the country. What about minister responsible for students? Minister responsible for married couples with only daughters? Minister responsible for housewives? Unfortunately, the only ministry for which Mr. Eitan *is* qualified for is ministry of millionaires.

5) Ya'akov Edery - Minister, responsible for liaison with the Knesset
In a Knesset where every 2.6-th member of coalition is a minister, and every minister is a member of Knesset, this must be a very important role. Can I say "minister responsible for ministers" ?

6) Meshulam Nahari - Minister without Portfolio
apparently, this is the "non responsible minister". He has no responsibilities. None whatsoever. He just is. Like the weather.

7) Eitan Cabel - Minister (responsible for the Israel Broadcasting Authority)
This is actually a very important ministry, just the name is wrong. They used to call it much more intuitively: "Minister of Propaganda". But we will know that things got really bad when the name changes to "Israel Broadcasting, Multicasting, Unicasting, and Receiving Authority". (broadcasting = 1 to all, multicasting = 1 to many, unicasting = 1 to 1).

Until the next time,
Minister of Offence

7 comments:

Irina Tsukerman said...

This is hilarious. Unfortunately, it's veru sad. But you left out one ministry they should have, but don't - the MO. ; )

Unknown said...

You said it! :)

Oleh Yahshan said...

Yury,
you missed a few ministers - like the fact that there are 4 ministers that are in charge of NOTHING!! They don't even have names - they just get a Volvo and a nice office (plus extra perks) and do nothing with themselves 0n everyone elsses expense.

ah the great Israeli Govt. :> good news is it won't last very long.

Unknown said...

oleh, can you say who got them? I was looking at the official list when writing this post, but I was getting a feeling things are missing.

Oleh Yahshan said...

yuri,
I saw the list on Maariv printed paper.

if you can read hebrew go to the Knesset Web site (it might be in english as well).

but to help you out there:
http://www.knesset.gov.il/govt/heb/GovtByNumber.asp

good luck have fun.

Unknown said...

thanks oleh. I do read hebrew, so I looked at the list and found the 4 do-nothing ministers. All 4 are in fact in my list, check it out. Just the hebrew version was too shy to give the details I got from the site of ministry of foreign affairs.

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