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Al-Ahram Weekly 18 - 24 March 1999 Issue No. 421 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 18 - 24 March 1999 Issue No. 421
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Features Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Day of decision at the Bar
By Mona El-NahhasFrustrated by the three-year-old sequestration imposed on the Bar Association, hundreds of lawyers are planning an extraordinary general assembly for today at the downtown headquarters of their syndicate, despite objections from the three custodians in charge.
The court-appointed custodians vowed not to allow the meeting to take place, describing it as illegal. Fearing that today's events could be heated, the custodians decided to shut down the syndicate, giving employees a compulsory day-off. They also published an announcement in Arabic-language newspapers, declaring that today's meeting would be postponed to another date to be fixed later.
Moreover, the custodians of the Association and its Cairo chapter filed a complaint on Monday with Prosecutor-General Ragaa El-Arabi, asking him to take all the necessary legal measures to protect the syndicate's offices. They maintained that convening a general assembly in this way was a violation of the law.
Ahmed Reda Ghatwari, one of the three custodians, argued that the signatures of 1,263 lawyers who had submitted the request for convening the assembly had not been endorsed by the branch syndicates, as required by law. He also said that the request should not have been submitted to the custodians because they do not play the role of syndicate chairman. El-Arabi referred the custodians' complaint to the district prosecutor for central Cairo to take the necessary action.
For their part, the lawyers vowed not to give in. "The custodians have no legal right to cancel or delay our meeting," Sameh Ashour, a candidate for the post of syndicate chairman, told Al-Ahram Weekly. "The general assembly will convene on schedule."
According to Ashour, the law stipulates that a meeting of the general assembly be held one month after a request is submitted. "We submitted the memorandum on 17 February to the custodians and all our measures are legally correct. The law does not make the approval of the custodians a pre-requisite for holding the assembly."
If the assembly convenes, lawyers said they would establish an interim committee to take over the Association, even if it came to using force. The committee would also make preparations for elections that would be held within 60 days, bringing the sequestration to an end. Ghatwari argued that only a court order, not a general assembly, can abolish the custodianship. The current situation was reminiscent of an earlier general assembly, held in May 1997, in which recommendations were shelved on the grounds that the meeting was illegal.
The situation deteriorated further last week after a judicial committee, empowered by law to supervise elections, sent back to the custodians the lists of voters they had submitted to it. The committee said the lists needed to be revised in order to remove the names of lawyers who are not qualified to vote.
A recent statement by the Arab Centre for the Independence of the Judiciary and the Legal Profession said it was the legal responsibility of the judicial committee to examine the voters' lists. The centre declared full support for the action taken by the lawyers. "It has become very clear that the government would not allow fair elections to take place," said Nasser Amin, the centre's head. He dismissed as a "sedative" promises by high-ranking state officials that the Bar crisis would be resolved soon.
Lawyers said that sending back the voters' lists to the custodians was a pretext for delaying elections. About 100 lawyers, dressed in black robes, organised a protest march on Monday inside the Cairo Southern Court and headed towards the office of the court's chief justice, Mahfouz Shouman, who acts as the head of the judicial committee. They submitted a memorandum to Shouman, urging that elections be held as soon as possible.
Shouman said he did not have time to check the lists of voters at all professional syndicates and suggested that the law governing professional syndicates be amended to allow the judicial committee to form other committees to examine the lists of voters. According to Shouman, the task of the judicial committee in fixing a date for the elections only begins after receiving the lists of voters.
