Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's chutzpah reached new heights on Wednesday when he asked for a continuance in the Holyland affair [involving alleged misconduct on his part when he served as mayor of Jerusalem] to postpone his pre-indictment hearing with prosecutors. By submitting this written request even after all other would-be defendants in this case have already undergone hearings, Olmert is acting like he is perched above everyone else. The way he sees it, he decides what is right and what is wrong. The draft letter of indictment against Olmert has been on the docket since March 2011. Olmert has already been granted preferred treatment by having the hearing postponed multiple times before, a privilege not granted to ordinary citizens. The hearing, originally scheduled for May, was then moved to July and then to late October. In his latest brazen move, Olmert now wants it held only in May 2012, a year after the letter of indictment was finalized. Wednesday was a bad day for those who want justice to prevail over the forces of evil. Those who champion the rule of law and good governance cannot come to terms with Tel Aviv Magistrate Court Judge Riva Niv's decision to deny State Prosecutor Moshe Lador immunity against prosecution for an interview he gave the Ha'aretz daily last year in which he accused Olmert of serious improprieties. Niv is the presiding judge in the libel suit Olmert filed against Lador after the interview was published. The state argued that Lador's interview was directly related to his job as State Prosecutor and therefore cannot be used against him. But Olmert wants to hurt Lador financially and to discredit him personally by asking the courts to prevent the state from taking over as the litigant in-lieu of Lador. The judge accepted Olmert's request but her decision might be overturned by a higher court, not because of the merits of either side's arguments but because allowing Niv's ruling to stand will make public servants shy away from courageous decisions to avoid being prosecuted. This would make Israel slide down a slippery slope towards silencing whistle blowers and other critical voices and perpetuate a dysfunctional civil service. Olmert supporters immediately came out of their hideouts after learning of Niv's ruling. Precisely because of such a reaction the State Prosecution must respond in kind to Olmert's incessant dodging of this most fateful pre-indictment hearing. We can only hope that Olmert's success in the magistrate court does not take the winds out of Lador's sails. He heads an organization that employs many good public servants; he is a ray of hope in the battle to have white-collar justice served. He has his faults. To name but one example, he decided against prosecuting Olmert in the highly dubious Bank Leumi privatization deal. But Olmert did not reciprocate and chose to sue him for libel in the Holyland case. Had the High Court of Justice ruled when Ometz, an organization dedicated to good governance, petitioned against Lador's decision and instructed him and the Attorney General to prosecute Olmert in the Bank Leumi affair, things would have been different today. I believe that had the Leumi case been fully pursued the entirety of Olmert's alleged misconduct would have come out, which would have spared Lador from this current ordeal in which he has to defend his reputation in court. Let's just hope that the dire straits Lador is in right now will not make him blink nor feel intimidated. Hopefully, the era of favoritism is over; the state prosecution is no longer an exclusive club of tycoons that will roll out a red carpet for Olmert. What we should be hearing from prosecutors is, "You say you do not want a pre-indictment hearing? You won't have one. The indictment must be served on the spot. This would make it clear that no one is above the law; Olmert is on par with the ordinary citizen.
Olmert had every right to take Lador to court, where the issue should be resolved through the normal legal mechanism, and I will not take a stand on this issue while it is still pending. But Olmert's ulterior motive for filing this suit is clear to me. He hopes that the courts recuse Lador from the Holyland case so that he cannot decide on whether to go ahead with the draft indictment and prosecute Olmert on his alleged role in it, perhaps the most severe suspicions to date against Olmert; the lawsuit is primarily designed to have Lador step aside by tainting him with personal prejudice.
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