Deputy Prime Minister Haim Ramon (Kadima) lashed out against lawyers at a business forum organized at Bar Ilan University today. "We would be better off training 3,000 welders than 3,000 lawyers," he stated, noting "the takeover by legal bureaucracy" as a primary danger to Israeli democracy. Ramon also spoke out against Attorney-General Menachem Mazuz calling him the personification of "legal coercion."

Ramon told the conference participants that government bureaucrats wield more power than the ministers themselves and that "if a citizen thinks, after they have received a negative response from the lower-levels, that turning to the minister will help…they are mistaken." He also noted that he keeps a government memorandum bearing the signatures of PM Ehud Olmert and three other government ministers, which was cancelled by the signature of a minor Finance Ministry official.

Deputy Prime Minister Ramon is, himself, a lawyer. He graduated from the Faculty of Law at Tel Aviv University.