Alexandria Judges' Club is now firmly in the hands of the pro-government camp, reports Mona El-Nahhas At noon last Friday judges backing Ismail El-Basyouni, the chairman of the Alexandria Judges' Club, began to cast their votes in elections for a third of the seats on the club's board. The turnout was low and the election one-sided. Four reformist candidates had earlier announced they were withdrawing from the poll. No surprise, then, that the four contested seats went to candidates from El-Basyouni's camp, who now control nine out of 14 board seats. El-Basyouni, widely assumed to receive government backing, won the chairmanship of Alexandria Judges' Club in January 2008, ousting Mahmoud El-Khodeiri, a leading advocate of judicial reform. The board's seats were subsequently divided equally between members of the El-Basyouni and El-Khodeiri camps, leading to endless disputes. Now with nine seats El-Basyouni will be able to ensure that judges calling for reform are marginalised. "We chose not to take part in such a scandalous poll," says Ahmed Mekki, who argues that events preceding the vote served only to tarnish the reputation of judges. Mekki has vowed to file a lawsuit contesting the validity of the whole electoral process. A week before the election the atmosphere at the club was tense. Reformist candidates Mahmoud Mekki, Ashraf El-Baroudi, Ashraf Ramadan and Ahmed Mehana informed the club board of their intention not to run in the polls and asked El-Basyouni, who had assigned himself as the head of the committee supervising polls, to omit their names from the list of nominees. The four reformist judges cited illegal measures taken by El-Basyouni prior to poll as the reason behind their withdrawal. The reformist camp says that El-Basyouni, in violation of the club's statutes, registered 161 judges on the voters' lists days before the elections while they were prevented from reviewing voters' lists themselves. Nor, they argued, had El-Basyouni taken seniority into account while forming the committees assigned with supervising the electoral process. "Membership of the club board was never one of our targets. It does not matter to us if we lose in the polls. What really concerns us is that the law is respected," they said in a joint statement sent to the club board ahead of Friday's general assembly. They called for a neutral committee to examine voters' lists and fix a new date for polls. El-Basyouni has turned a deaf ear to their demands. In a statement issued by the board he insisted that all electoral measures had been valid and refused to remove their names from the list of candidates. "The government has managed to tighten its grip over the club and to undermine the reformist trend," said El-Khodeiri, commenting on the latest events at the Alexandria Judges' Club. "Besides illegally registering judges on voters' lists, hundreds of others were mobilised to vote for El-Basyouni's candidates." In addition to electing four new board members the assembled judges used the opportunity to push through other controversial decisions. The general assembly decided to amend the club's internal statutes and abolish the requirement that one-third of board seats be contested each year. This means that El-Basyouni's camp will retain a majority until 2011. Members of the general assembly also submitted a proposal to the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) in which they suggested that any judge seeking to speak to the media first secure written approval from the SJC. And in a tit-for-tat move El-Basyouni's supporters forwarded an official complain to the SJC demanding legal action be taken against reformist candidates for "violations committed before the polls".
