History is unlikely to be kind to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel. He disastrously mismanaged the 2006 Lebanon war. And now, besmirched by financial scandals, he has announced plans to leave office as soon as a successor can be confirmed.

The alliance between President Mugabe’s Zanu (PF) party and a breakaway faction of the Movement for Democratic Change would restore the control of parliament that Zanu (PF) lost to the MDC in the March election. However, it will do little to help a country saddled with the world’s highest inflation rate and lowest life expectancy after years of grotesque misrule.

In June the Corruption and Crime Commission found that the Opposition Racing and Gaming Spokesman had tabled a motion in Parliament provided by the lobbyist Brian Burke. Mr McGrath says he does not want to be a liability to the Liberals during the campaign.

With the resignation of Ehud Olmert, Israel’s political leadership has perhaps never been at a more dignified yet perplexing juncture. As Israelis wait for a new prime minister to emerge, they would do well to weigh up their appetite for further scandal.

Ehud Olmert’s announcement marks the apex of a political storm unleashed in May when police launched a corruption probe over suspicions he had accepted vast sums of money from a US financier to fund elections campaigns and a lavish lifestyle in the 13 years before he became prime minister in 2006.

It is the first ruling against the family of telecommunications tycoon Thaksin Shinawatra’s family since the 2006 military coup that toppled him from power. The military junta has long alleged that Mr Thaksin and his family engaged in corrupt practices during his time in office.

The details of what the investigators discovered about the Justice Department’s hiring practices were appalling, and Attorney General Michael Mukasey’s response was disgracefully lukewarm. If he hopes to leave office with any sort of reputation for integrity, he needs to get serious about punishing this sort of wrongdoing.

The Justice Department announced the charges at a news conference on Tuesday afternoon. The document says that, from the spring of 1999 through the late summer of 2007, Senator Ted Stevens, the longest-serving Republican senator in United States history, failed to report “things of value” that he received in connection with his home in the ski resort city of Girdwood, about 40 miles south of Anchorage.

The Victorian Greens will today move a bill to toughen existing conflict of interest and donation disclosure rules, based on the current West Australian model. But last night Local Government Minister Richard Wynne sought to trump the Greens with a sneak preview of his own bill, due in September.