The standoff between the Bar Association's Nasserist chairman and its Muslim Brotherhood-dominated council is, once again, coming to a head. Mona El-Nahhas reports During a press conference at the Bar Association headquarters on Sunday, syndicate chairman Sameh Ashour said he would look to the syndicate's general assembly to arbitrate between him and council members belonging to the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood group -- to determine who would end up in control of the organisation's affairs. Ashour, a Nasserist, thinks arbitration will provide the perfect solution to the ongoing struggle between the syndicate's Nasserists and Muslim brothers. The conflict began in 2001, after Ashour was elected syndicate chairman for the first time, and the Brotherhood managed to pick up two-thirds of the council seats. From that moment on, each side has tried its best to marginalise the other; the result has been an overall decline in the performance of the syndicate as a whole. This year's elections -- which took place on 19 March -- generated the same kind of results, with Nasserist Ashour winning the chairman's seat, and the Brotherhood again dominating the council. The equation seems to promise another four years of internal bickering. At Sunday's press conference, Ashour seemed sure that the general assembly -- if asked to -- would withdraw its confidence from the council, thus forcing its mostly Brotherhood members to resign. And if the assembly were to pull the rug out from under him instead, Ashour said he would abide by the decision, and quit. The other side -- the Brotherhood -- also indicated their willingness to leave matters up to the assembly, even though council member Gamal Tageddin, spokesman of the association's Brotherhood bloc, said the idea was more akin to holding another election. The Brotherhood occupies 15 of the 24 council seats. Ashour's supporters -- who hold the remaining nine -- were muscled out of the council's executive bureau, which was formed earlier last week. The syndicate's secretary-general post went to prominent Brotherhood member Ahmed Seif El-Islam. Mohamed Toson, another Brotherhood member, became the syndicate chairman's first deputy. The second deputy seat went to Wafdist Mahmoud El-Saqqa, a longtime ally of the council's Brotherhood members. Another ally, Mohamed Kamel, became syndicate treasurer. The line-up guarantees that the syndicate's financial and administrative affairs will all be in the Brotherhood's hands. Ashour said the way the bureau was formed "violated the law, which stipulates that the syndicate chairman is the only one entitled to hold a council meeting to form the council's bureau." He said one group should not dominate all the council's affairs, or have an upper hand over the syndicate as a whole; instead, "all political forces should be represented." For their part, the Brotherhood members denied having any intentions of dominating the syndicate. Tageddin said the council had repeatedly asked Ashour to hold a council meeting after the March vote, but had gotten no response. "According to Article 139 of the law governing the legal profession," he said, "any 10 members of the syndicate council have the right to call for a council meeting. So, the decisions taken during the council meeting can not be legally refuted," he said. Ashour's general assembly move brings recent mediation efforts exerted by Islamist lawyer Montasser El-Zayat to an end. El- Zayat had been trying to settle the Brotherhood-Nasserist dispute, and catalyse the formation of a balanced council bureau representing the two forces. El-Zayat predicted that the power struggle would eventually result in the syndicate being placed under judicial sequestration again. The sequestration under which the Bar Association was placed in 1996 was only lifted in 2001. According to El-Zayat, "unless the current dispute is solved, lawyers will pay a very high price."
