The question of who should draft the new judiciary law has split judges, reports Mona El-Nahhas Friday's general assembly of Cairo Judges' Club opted to abandon its draft of a new judiciary law without putting the draft up for a vote. Yet following the general assembly, which ended without any recommendations being passed, Ahmed El-Zend, chairman of the club, told reporters that the draft law which had been prepared would for the first time guarantee judicial independence from the executive. El-Zend, who became the chairman of Cairo Judges' Club in 2008, has never been noted as a reformer. On several occasions under the regime of Hosni Mubarak he argued that the judiciary enjoyed total independence. El-Zend's interest in the issue appears to have been sparked in July when Hossam El-Gheriani, the newly- appointed chairman of the Supreme Judiciary Council (SJC), assigned a group of reformist judges to produce draft amendments to the judiciary law. An issue to which he had hitherto attached no importance suddenly became a matter of prerogative, with El-Zend arguing it was up to judges' clubs to frame any amendments. In an angry statement he announced that the Cairo Judges' Club would boycott El-Gheriani's judicial committee, headed by leading reformist Ahmed Mekki. He then formed a committee of his own, including the heads of six branch judges clubs, to prepare an alternative draft. Friday's general assembly was convened in order to secure judges' approval for the new amendments. But attendance was low, the meeting marred by verbal clashes between judges and the draft was eventually withdrawn. Having failed to mobilise judges against Mekki and his committee, Club board members started to tone down earlier criticisms. "In preparing our draft we were seeking only to suggest to the SJC what judges' clubs thought the new law should look like," insisted Mahmoud El-Sherif, official spokesman of the Cairo Judges' Club. In an attempt to strike a conciliatory note, El-Zend said that if Mekki's committee produced a better draft law than the Judges' Club the club would accept it. The general assembly was fractious, with protesters gathering outside the Higher Judiciary House to demand the removal of judges who had kowtowed to the former regime. Mekki said that suggestions proposed by the club would be taken into consideration in preparing a final draft of the law. "From the beginning we announced that judges' clubs were welcome to present ideas regarding the new amendments." The SJC committee's preliminary draft, which Mekki says will be ready within days, will be put up for public discussion at the Higher Judiciary House. "The issue of an independent judiciary concerns the public first and foremost and so the public should have a say in the new law," he said. Pressure to amend the current judiciary law has been building for two decades. Draft laws have been produced but repeatedly shelved. Only now, with reformist judges enjoying the upper hand, does it look like an independent judiciary might become a reality. Under the draft law being prepared, the powers of the minister of justice are expected to be curtailed and any disciplinary action against judges removed from the ministry and placed in the hands of the SJC. The SJC will also be authorised to appoint the prosecutor- general, a post that until now has been in the hands of the presidency. While Mekki hopes that the new law will be endorsed by the SCAF before parliamentary polls, other judges argue that it would be better for the new law to be issued when a legitimate legislative authority is in place. "It would be better to have judicial independence endorsed by a freely elected parliament rather than the military council which I suspect has little intention of passing a judiciary law now," says Hassan El-Naggar, the reformist chairman of Zagazig Judges' Club.
