Keeping to the straight and narrow
Islamists keep quiet as corruption is rooted out at the Bar Association. Mona El-Nahhas reports
Ashour
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The Bar Association's Nasserist Chairman Sameh Ashour has taken decisive steps to finally end attempts made by an Islamist-controlled council to marginalise his role.
Two weeks ago, Ashour decided to ban Islamist lawyer Mohamed Toson, the Bar Association's second deputy, from signing syndicate cheques. Ashour informed banks dealing with the syndicate of his decision, asking them not to cash any cheque bearing Toson's signature. Ashour stated that in case of the chairman's absence cheques should be signed by the first deputy, Mahmoud El-Saqqa.
According to Ashour, "the decision aimed at correcting malpractice and limiting the size of expenditure", adding that the council has been using syndicate money to reward lawyers that support them.
During a stormy council meeting held on 2 October, and which lasted for nearly seven hours, Ashour did not respond to requests of Brotherhood council members who asked him to rescind his decision. Ashour stuck to his decision, informing the assembled meeting that signing syndicate cheques is his affair, and that council members have nothing to do with this matter. "I do not know why Toson and his men insist on having their hands on the syndicate's financial affairs," Ashour said. Following the meeting, hundreds of lawyers supporting Ashour gathered in front of his office hailing the decision, and describing it as an important step towards reforming affairs in the syndicate.
The meeting was attended by chairmen of 11 branch syndicates who volunteered to play the role of mediators. However, the meeting failed to reach any compromise. The 11 chairmen promised that they would settle the disputes between the Islamist council and the Nasserist chairman within a week, although it seems even yet to be a pipe dream.
Ashour decided not to make a truce. In another decisive step, he filed a complaint to the Prosecutor-General Maher Abdel-Wahed, accusing the council of squandering syndicate money. The complaint came after an inspecting committee, formed by Ashour, discovered that a sum of syndicate money was paid to a printing house which has no commercial license. The committee also found bills from another printing house in Heliopolis bearing forged seals. The estimated sum of money involved in these cases was LE350,155.
Ashour said that this complaint will not be the last. "The inspecting committee will not stop until exposing the true size of financial corruption at the syndicate," Ashour said.
The move made by Ashour came after a clash with the council's Islamist members over holding the third annual conference of lawyers in the coastal city of Ras Al-Barr. They opposed the idea of holding the conference, viewing it as a waste of money.
"While opposing the Ras Al-Barr conference which cost only LE200,000, the Muslim Brotherhood [sympathisers] wasted a sum of LE600,000 last month holding another conference on the Northern Coast," said Khaled Abu Kresha, a council member and supporter of Ashour. "It was very important to hold the Ras Al-Barr conference, especially as meetings of the syndicate's general assembly did not take place since the last elections of 2001," Abu Kresha added.
The three-day conference discussed a number of issues related to the profession and stressed the necessity of unifying the syndicate and not allowing "certain trends", religious perhaps, to dominate its affairs.
Reacting angrily, the Islamist-controlled council considered referring Ashour to a disciplinary committee which would relieve him of his post, on the grounds that the conference was held against the will of the council. Yet, Abu Kresha told Al-Ahram Weekly that the council approved the idea of holding the conference at the beginning. "Their approval was registered in the minutes of the session held for discussing such issues. Then all of a sudden, they decided to withdraw their approval, and refrained from attending the meeting held one week before the conference to discuss its preparations," he said.
In a sardonic tone Ashour told the Weekly that the council does not have any legal authority to depose an elected chairman. He noted that the general assembly is the only body which has sanction over him.
Feeling their sensitive position, Islamist members chose to remain silent. Toson declined to give any press statements. Ahmed Seif El-Islam Hassan El-Banna, a leading figure in the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood and secretary- general of the Bar Association, also chose to keep quiet, while registering his fear that "matters will get worse".
The current situation may be viewed as a shift in the policy of the Muslim Brotherhood, who have attempted since the last elections of the Bar Association, held in February 2001, to increase their control by depending on the majority they constitute at the council. It has become usual for them to ignore decisions passed by the chairman and decide by themselves what should be done at the syndicate.
Last August, El-Banna refused to recognise the formation of a women's committee, after Nasserist members managed to occupy six of the committee's seats, leaving only one seat to an Islamist woman. Although the formation of the women's committee was endorsed by Ashour, El-Banna decided to abolish the election results and reform the committee in a way allowing Islamist members to prevail.
This incident took place only two months after Islamists managed to assign leading posts of the syndicate bureau to their supporters and to exclude Ashour's supporters from active positions.
The current deteriorating situation at the Bar Association has raised concerns among lawyers for the future of their syndicate.
Many now fear that such affairs may lead to judicial sequestration, which the syndicate endured from 1996 until 2001 when Islamists were in control.
Yet Ashour views the scenario of placing the syndicate under sequestration as "a very remote possibility", as the current circumstances, at least according to him, are "totally different", from those of the 1990s.
