A group of lawyers are discussing reinstating a sit-in that took place after discussing proposed amendments to the bar association electoral law. The Leftist Lawyers, The Nasserist Lawyers Group and Islamist lawyers were among the groups that started the sit-in on Thursday to protest the surprise adjustments to the syndicate’s electoral laws which were discussed in parliament over the weekend.
“We feel these proposed amendments aim at facilitating the election of the head of the syndicate to match with the ruling party’s future nominee,” said Ahmed Helmy, lawyer and member of the Front for the Defense of the Syndicate’s Independence. “They want to control the syndicate…despite the financial deficit in last year’s budget that reached LE29 million due to corrupt management.”
The controversial proposed amendments include changing five articles, four of which are related to the election of the head of the bar association and the syndicate council.
According to the current law, a request by 500 lawyers can call for a general assembly requiring at least 2,000 members of the bar association council, a meeting that could nullify the entire council and result in fresh elections.
“They want to raise it to five thousand lawyers in order to gather the general assembly…they also require the syndicate’s general assembly to contain ten thousand members–a huge figure even for the current syndicate’s buildings and facilities,” said Ahmed Seif el-Islam, a lawyer from the Leftist Lawyers group.
Many lawyers in the sit-in, including Seif el-Islam, said that the amendments were never discussed by the members of the Lawyer’s syndicate, neither in their headquarters in Downtown Cairo nor at any other branch. “They even propose that elections take place outside the syndicate’s buildings, a maneuver that would definitely result in fraud,” added Seif el-Islam.
The proposed amendment was removed yesterday from the general parliamentary session and was placed in the hands of parliament’s constitutional committee until it can be examined more thoroughly.
At a press conference that took place on 15 May, Hamdy Khalifa, current head of the lawyer’s syndicate, justified the controversial amendments, surrounded by opposing lawyers screaming out, “Batel,” or “illegitimate!” According to Khalifa, who’s affiliated with the ruling party, the rise in the number of lawyers over the past three decades justifies the rise in the number of the general assembly.
“This ongoing dispute has no point because these amendments are beneficial to the lawyers,” said Khalifa. “The law that required 500 lawyers to call for a general assembly was issued in 1983, when the number of registered lawyers was 40,000, out of which 25,000 were practitioners. Today, this figure has been multiplied twenty times,” he added.
At the conference, Khalifa also confirmed that the main benefit of the amendment would be to provide legal immunity to those who work as lawyers.
“These are lies, because the amendments that were discussed by the constitutional committee don’t include such an article,” said Seif el-Islam, pointing to a four-page report including the minutes of the committee meeting, headed by Amal Othman.
At a meeting held later tonight at the Hisham Mubarak Law Center, lawyers from the front for syndicate independence will decide whether or not the sit-in will be resumed.
