French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

Reading up about Israeli politics, it seems that this might be a "be careful what you wish for" situation. They had previously put in prison both a prime minister and a president, and the disastrous governance there over the last decade and a half appears to be in large motivated by Netanyahu's almost certain knowledge that he'll go to prison if and when he loses his grip on the reins.

The documentary The Bibi Files was a particularly interesting examination of the allegations against him and his almost shrugging response to them [0]. And going back to America, a week ago Trump asked the Israeli president to preemptively pardon Netanyahu during his speech at their parliament [1], which I find to be concerning on all possible levels.

[0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt33338697/

[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/trump-urges-israel...

I'm not into politics and I'm far from an expert but this has more to it. Netanyahu doesn't just wait until he loses his grip on the rein, he's making the changes to the system (i.e ruin the whole country for everyone) so he won't count as a criminal when this is all over.

No offense but the french people should thank god their criminal in control didn't go all the way through turning the country into a shit show in the process.

As I said before I believe we live in a global time in which countries must embrace the rule of law systematically in order to survive as democracies. Otherwise you just get a kleptocracy with extra steps, just like in the US, some of Europe and Russia.

Thinking about this some more, I'd like to offer an even more controversial opinion, being a proposal for a governance structure that I think would have entirely different failure modes:

How about it if by a fuller acceptance that power corrupts, we have the head of government only serve for one term and automatically be taken to (actual) prison once their time is done. They would then have an expedited trial by a socioeconomically diverse jury representing the population, judge their overreach in different areas, and how long of a sentence they should be given; at best, they would be released after a month or two for time served. Afterwards, unless this has been explicitly revoked from them due to gross misconduct, the former head of government would be given a sufficiently generous stipend to live and travel without ever needing to work again, and encouraged to spend the rest of their lives on charitable pursuits.

The big risk I see here is that by stripping some of the long-term power from the head of government, it would lead to a re-concentration of powers in a head of party role, or other behind-the-scenes power brokers, but the intent here is that the head of government once elected is explicitly given the ability to overreach, and particularly knowing that they'll be set for life, they'll have the freedom to act independently, in what hopefully would be their take on the country's best interests, and a desire to leave a positive legacy. And furthermore, I think that restricting the ascension to power to those who are willing to take on that prison time would attract people who are a bit less vain than the typical crop of candidates, and at the same time reduce the stigma of prison in general, and hopefully lead to political interest in improving prison conditions.

Yes, exactly - I was hoping to allude to that, but apparently wasn't clear in my writing. It seems to me that he has arrived at a "L'État, c'est moi" mentality, doing everything in his power (and consolidating as much additional power as possible) to stay out of prison, even (as you said) at the cost of destroying the country around him and the rest of the middle east, intentionally aggravating all the conflicts in the area, to be able to continuously yell out about crises that (in the mind of those who support him) necessitate his staying in power.

and everyone's favorite example of killing a democracy/republic to avoid prosecution, Julius Cesar.

> motivated by Netanyahu's almost certain knowledge that he'll go to prison if and when he loses his grip on the reins.

Guilt beyond a reasonable doubt is determined by trial in an open court where defendent has the right to cross examine witnesses and present evidence. Do not assume guilt or innocence based on heavily politisized reporting.

For anyone who is not following the trial, Netanyahu was charged with bribery and a few lesser charges which do not have a direct US equivalents. As soon as the prosecution's case-in-chief was over, the judges publicly notified the prosecution that they should drop the bribery charges as they are unlikely to be able to prove them.

The prosecution case for briberty was built on a hypothesized meeting in which Netanyahu supposedely instructed the director general of the ministry of communications to serve the interests of Elovitch.

During cross examination, the defense managed to prove conclusively that such a meeting, as described, could not have occurred. They also showed that the prosecution had in its possession all the necssary evidence to show such a meeting could not have occurred.

https://www.kan.org.il/content/kan-news/local/409910/ (use Google Translate)