Nominations for February's elections at the Cairo Judges Club close today. It is expected to be a fierce battle, reports Mona El-Nahhas Nominations opened on Sunday for candidates wanting to run in the Cairo Judges Club elections scheduled for 13 February. By Tuesday morning just three nominees for the post of the club chairman had registered together with candidates competing for seats on the 14-member club board. The nomination period closes today. Judge Mahmoud Zaki, head of the general supervisory committee, said on Monday it was still too early to judge whether there was likely to be a significant increase in registered candidates. Hisham Geneina, the current secretary-general, Ahmed El-Zend. head of Tanta Appeals Court, and Mohamed Mansi, chairman of Desouq Judges Club, are the three nominees for the seat of chairman. Geneina is a leader of the reformist group of judges who have long battled for a more independent judiciary. His electoral list includes the names of 14 reformist candidates competing for seats on the board. El-Zend and Mansi are both rumoured to have the backing of the regime though each has denied any connection to government circles. After submitting his nomination papers Mansi insisted that it was wrong to view him as the government candidate. Both Mansi and El-Zend have promised to work towards judicial independence as well as upgrade the level of services offered to club members. The results of the coming elections, in which members of all 20 branch clubs are eligible to vote, has been trailed as a referendum on the continuing commitment of judges to pursue reform though Geneina denies any divergence of opinion over the issue. "Those who are trying to stir judges to adopt an anti-reform position comprise at most four or five chairmen of branch clubs. Their views do not reflect those of their club members," Geneina told Al-Ahram Weekly. The anti-reform clique, led by the head of Assiut Judges' Club judge Rifaat El-Sayed, has repeatedly accused the current board and chairman of allowing Islamists and other opposition forces to hijack Cairo Judges' Club. Geneina has stated that he decided to stand to continue the work of Zakaria Abdel-Aziz, the current club chairman. Abdel-Aziz, who has had two successive terms as chairman since 2002, early announced that he would not stand in order to give others a fair chance to take over. He has recently been the focus of criticism by judges known to have pro-government affiliations, some of whom took legal action against him when he suspended judges who failed to pay their monthly membership fees. In 2006 the general assembly recommended monthly membership fees be increased from LE2 to LE20 to help the club through the acute financial crisis provoked when the government halted its own grant. The petitioners allege that the assembly meeting lacked a quorum and its decisions were therefore null and void. Late last month Cairo Appeals Court overturned Abdel-Aziz's decision to dismiss club members who were in arrears and upheld their right to stand in the forthcoming election. Abdel-Aziz expressed surprise at the ruling, arguing that he had made no decision to expel members. Instead, he had merely warned them to abide by the club's internal statutes which clearly state members who fail to pay their monthly fees will have their membership withdrawn. Interviewed on Sunday evening on Weghet Nazar, a programme broadcast on state run television, Moqbel Shaker, the chairman of the state- appointed Supreme Judiciary Council, launched an attack on the club's current administration, describing Abdel-Aziz's board members as a minority that had usurped control of the board for six successive years. "I called Abdel-Latif El-Manawi, the programme's host, before the transmission of the interview," says Geneina, "and asked him to give me a chance to reply. Although El-Manawi promised to phone me, saying that it was my right to answer the criticisms I waited until the end of the programme yet nobody called me," Geneina said. Abdel-Aziz has accused senior state officials of fabricating issues to undermine the club's role in calling for an independent judiciary, a view that Geneina says Shaker's broadcast, and unanswered criticisms, which constitute clear interference in the coming electoral battle, only serves to underline.
