CAIRO: Candidates for the Lawyer’s Syndicate’s chairman position will be filing their applications today following a court order for elections to resume.
This comes after an Administrative Court ruled in October that the door for candidate’s applications be closed, citing amendments to the professional syndicates’ law.
Incumbent Chairman of the Lawyers’ Syndicate Sameh Ashour, controversial MP Talaat El-Sadat, lawyer Ragaey Atteya and Muslim Brotherhood lawyer Montassar El-Zayat are among the candidates.
“We are going to file our application on Tuesday and we hope that the elections will take place amidst a democratic atmosphere unlike the legislative chaos that happened, said Mohsen Eid, lawyer and spokesperson for El-Sadat, referring to the elections being halt, which he attributes to having two conflicting laws.
The first is Article 100 in the professional syndicates’ law, which gives South Cairo Court Judge Farouk Sultan the right to monitor the elections. This, El-Sadat said, contradicts Article 197/2008, which gives the Cairo Appeals Court, headed by Judge Adel Anrawes, the right to monitor the elections.
“In order to avoid those legislative problems in the future, on Tuesday we will also submit a draft law to the People’s Assembly which annuls the other flawed laws, said Eid.
“We have previously posted the draft law on the internet so every lawyer could give their opinion on it and today we are holding a session to finalize the law following the feedback we have received, he added.
Another candidate for the chairman’s position, Atteya, also hoped that the elections will be carried out democratically, without any further problems.
He specifically blames Ashour for stopping the elections before so that he would “come back to the chairman’s position and retain his occupation of the syndicate, he told Daily News Egypt.
The judicial committee supervising the Lawyers’ Syndicate elections had previously postponed the elections from Oct. 10 to Nov. 14 to give the candidates more time to campaign.
According to Refaat El-Saeed, head of the judicial committee, the elections were postponed as a result of complaints by candidates who saw it difficult to campaign during Ramadan.
The committee ordered to resume the elections on Nov. 9.
