Bizarre notion

In your May 30 editorial “Just demand,” you say: “Watching [Avigdor] Liberman – a man who heads a party with just six MKs – take the Defense portfolio must not be easy for Bennett, who probably believes he is more deserving as head of a party with eight MKs.”

More deserving because his party has more seats in the Knesset? Here is one of the more egregious, damaging factors in our system of government. What a bizarre notion!

Qualification for a cabinet post should be based on a candidate’s knowledge and understanding of the technical aspects of the ministry, and on his or her administrative ability. An example of this method was US President Barack Obama’s choice of Robert Gates, a holdover from a Republican administration, as secretary of defense because Gates was a man who fit the description of what an administrator should be. It was the result of Obama’s confidence in Gates’s proven ability to bring success to the office and carry out the president’s program, not because he was member of the party with the most seats in Congress.

Our ministers are frequently shifted from ministry to ministry or appointed based on party leverage growing out of coalition politics. Thus, ministries see no end of new ministers who dissolve policy and programs, and create new ones. The Education Ministry is a prime example. No wonder our education system is such a mess.

A new paradigm for appointments must be devised that eliminates coalition politics, egos and political reward, and the egregious damage and blackmail from small parties. Israel’s citizens deserve a better government than that to which we are consistently subjected.

BERNARD SMITH Jerusalem