MK Tzipi Hotovely has gone to the head of the central Elections Committee, Justice Elyakim Rubenstein, with a request to disqualify former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert from running for office in the next elections. Hotovely argued that Olmert’s conviction for breach of trust makes him unsuitable to hold office.

“Elections are a time to strengthen public faith in the political process, not to shake it,” Hotovely said. “The return of a criminal convicted of corruption in office to public service, even if it has some marginal support, deals a death blow to the status of the Knesset – particularly when the ink has not yet dried on the [judges] description of the crime he was convicted of as ‘dangerous and destructive.’”