While judges agreed to supervise this week's referendum, their battle over monitoring this fall's elections saw equal doses of flexibility and dissent. Mona El-Nahhas reports Although thousands of judges are threatening not to supervise this year's presidential and parliamentary elections, they expressed their willingness to supervise this week's referendum. In fact, 13,268 judges, prosecutors, and other judicial figures supervised the 325 main poll stations on Wednesday. "The referendum and the elections are entirely different matters. Because there aren't competing candidates, the possibilities of rigging the referendum's results are very slight," said Cassation Court Deputy Chief Justice Ahmed Mekki. It's the September elections that the judges are more worked up about. At a 13 May Cairo Judges Club general assembly, they threatened not to supervise this year's elections unless the government responds to their demands, which include being given full control over every single stage of the elections, and amending the judicial authority law to guarantee their total independence from the Justice Ministry's executive authority. Although these have been the judges' demands for years (their draft amendment was submitted to the Ministry of Justice in 1991), the escalation of their position has taken place over the past two months. The government, meanwhile, has been responding with attempts to split the judges' ranks. The bonuses the ministry has promised to pay judges who agree to supervise elections have convinced at least one group of judges to publicly drop the 13 May Judges Club demands, and announce their willingness to supervise the vote. Meanwhile, in the wake of the 13 May general assembly, a schism has emerged between the elected judges clubs and the appointed Supreme Council of Judges, which called the general assembly illegal, questioned the attendance figures, and described the attendees as "a mere minority going against the law". The Supreme Council's statement claimed that the assembly's recommendations do not reflect the will of the majority of judges who were in favour of supervising elections. The Judges Club responded by submitting a formal complaint with the prosecutor-general. Cairo Judges Club Secretary-General Hisham Geneina said the judges decided to supervise the referendum -- even though the government has not yet responded to their demands -- because "we agreed that our final decision regarding the supervision of elections would be defined on 2 September, at our next general assembly. No decision to boycott elections can be taken before then." Geneina said escalation of the judges' deadlock with the state would not serve the judges' cause. Sources close to the Judges Club also predicted that the judges might even drop their constitutional amendment demand, asking only for guarantees that the elections will be fair. The capitulation stems from a growing awareness amongst the judges that there may not be enough time for the draft to be endorsed before the assembly recesses in June. To make matters more difficult, after examining the amendment, the Supreme Council of Judges said it wanted to get the opinions of the different courts' general assemblies before giving its consent. Some judges said there were possibilities that Wednesday's referendum would be rigged. The fact that judicial supervision was limited to the main poll stations made that more likely, Geneina said. An estimated 54,000 auxiliary stations were supervised by high-ranking civil employees working for different state bodies.
