CAIRO: Professional syndicate members said they are worried that the government would “ignore and reverse” a court order that deemed incumbent boards of all syndicates illegitimate, requiring new elections, especially as the parliament prepares a related draft law.
Professional syndicate members said that current board members are reluctant to relinquish their posts and are attempting to find legal ways to postpone elections.
“When I proposed the topic [to] the Lawyers’ Syndicate Board in our last meeting [regarding] the [implementation] of the SCC’s ruling, [the board] refused to discuss it and didn’t take the issue seriously,” said Mohamed Al-Damaty, a Lawyers’ Syndicate board member.
According to Mona Mina, a spokesperson for the Doctors Without Rights movement, the Doctors’ Syndicate Board stated that they will call for a general assembly next November and will hold elections in April 2012.
“We are trying to push for early elections, but we are still discussing how to implement the Supreme Constitutional Court’s (SCC) ruling,” said Mina.
Head of the Journalists’ Syndicate Makram Mohamed Ahmed said that he will be ready to hold elections once he receives an official request to do so from the appropriate authorities.
The SCC issued its final ruling last week on Laws 100 and 105 of 1993 that regulate the board elections of professional syndicates, deeming the board elections process to be unconstitutional and thus requiring new elections be held.
According to the laws deemed unconstitutional, syndicates’ elections could only be initiated by a South Cairo judge rather than by the internal bylaws of each syndicate.
Moreover, under the overturned law, election results were only legitimate if at least 50 percent of syndicate members cast their votes; if less than 50 percent of members’ votes were received, another election was required to be held after two weeks, during which the attendance of 30 percent of the syndicate’ membership was mandatory. If still less than 50 percent of members voted in the second election, a board of judges was appointed to run the syndicate board.
“The current [Lawyers’ Syndicate] Board argues that the SCC’s ruling [doesn’t] apply [to the board for the Lawyers’ Syndicate], since an adequate number of voters attended the elections,” said Khaled Abu Kreisha, a board member of the Lawyers’ Syndicate. “However, the bases on which the general assembly was called [was] unconstitutional.
“Also, all those board members who won [through] a re-run [election] are illegitimate.”
Both Al-Damaty and Abu Kreisha stated that they were prepared to resign, but that their resignations would be ineffective if other board members refused to follow suit.
Both men called for the establishment of a committee that would force syndicates to implement the court ruling.
“The government has a [tendency] to ignore court rulings,” Abu Kreisha said. “But if this ruling receives the same treatment by officials, [it] would kill the profession … the mobilization of syndicate members [is needed] to push for the application of the ruling, outside [the courtroom].”
The substitute law being proposed by the government stipulates that syndicates only need 30 percent of members to vote in board elections for them to be conclusive.
“We refuse this new law,” said Tarek Al-Nabarawy, a board member of the Engineers’ Syndicate. “Every syndicate has enough internal bylaws that govern its elections process. We demand calling the general assembly to convene to decide on a date for the [board] elections as soon as possible.”
According to Essam Al-Islamboly — the lawyer who originally filed the case with the SCC — the court’s ruling is a mandatory one to be applied retroactively covering the period starting from the application of the now unconstitutional 1993 syndicate board election laws.
“[The general assembly must] issue a new law, or [else] each syndicate is pinned to hold elections according to its internal bylaws,” Al-Islamboly said.
Although the SCC determined that Law 100 of 1993 was unconstitutional because it wasn’t discussed at the Shoura Council before being ratified, Al-Islamboly added that the law also challenged the concept of judiciary independence while perpetuating an inequality that exists between professional syndicate board elections and the elections of other bodies in which no minimum number of voters is required.
