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Of
courts and votes The
incumbent President, Mr Ikram Mohamed, a President's counsel, was
challenged by Mr. Desmond Fernando, another President's counsel. His challenger appealed almost on the same lines. It appears therefore that the voters have agreed with Ikram and voted with Fernando. As the contest closed in, the campaign was seen going from the sublime to the ridiculous. Issues degenerated to the trivia of garlands, the age of contenders, and the role of journalists in these elections. In desperation the state media was inducted into the campaign at the eleventh hour - but as it turns out, only to the advantage of the challenger. Indeed, the media plays a role in the affairs of lawyers, as it does in the affairs of doctors or engineers or architects or nurses or bus drivers - and that's only because media persons play a vital role - - some more than others -- in public affairs. It’s pertinent to recall that in recent months the Editors Guild took up cudgels with the BASL hierarchy when its President invited judges to use the laws of contempt of court on journalists for ' bringing the judiciary into disrepute '. It bears mention that there was no need for the journalists to bring the judiciary to further disrepute when sections of the judiciary and lawyers were doing a fine job all by themselves in this regard. The Editors Guild has long asked for a law that deals with contempt of court, which will make the matter of contempt independent of the whims and fancies of senior judges. Parliament eventually appointed an all-party Select Committee to go into the issue. Unfortunately, the work of that committee could not be completed as Parliament was dissolved in April last year; but the Guild is urging the new House to take this work forward. The House can be guided by the MANESAR declaration, which is the upshot of a newspaper Editor's conference on contempt of court held last year in Hyderabad India. It calls for contempt laws to be codified, so that sentences for contempt are even-handed and are uniform and not at judicial fancy. The dignity of any profession is however primarily the responsibility of its practitioners, and considering the fact that Mr. Fernando's platform was to shore up public confidence in the judiciary, it would seem that the lawyers have given him a ' yes vote ' and a mandate to do what he has promised to. The less said about the defeated candidate the better on this score. Politics has entered mainstream public life in this country, and the professional corpus is thoroughly infiltrated by politics in its every artery. The BASL is no exception. There is a heavy burden now cast upon Mr. Fernando to shed political affiliations of the BASL, and do justice to his once noble profession. In the immediate afterglow of his victory he told his opponents that he "would never be a tool of any outsider'', and that his "loyalty would be to the Bar Association, the legal profession and the people of this country ". The Bar plays a very significant role in the life of any nation, especially a nation that wishes to call itself a democracy where the Rule of Law is paramount. As stated in the Pen and Wig column in this newspaper a few weeks back, "the Bar Association is a watchdog group and a social sentinel which cracks the whip when others in national policymaking are out of line.'' It's a powerful lobby group, which acts as a tool in preserving democracy in this country. It's not the best of times for Rule of Law in Sri Lanka, and the Bar Association's role in Desmond Fernando's tenure hence cannot be overstated. The Pen and Wig column also opined "today the Bar Association has lost all that clout it enjoyed in society. It's niche as a powerful lobby in society is no more -- for the simple reason that it has been reduced to the clownish stature of an organisation that does not look after itself. It has become a station of sycophants - - and the distributor of pork barrel favours. But what was the original intent of the Bar Association, the rationale for its existence? To approve loans and to disburse scholarships? Hardly.'' The BASL election was one in which the incumbent tried to exercise leverage by jumping the tsunami-aid bandwagon (not to mention the photocopier distribution and scholaship disbusrment bandwagon) all with the patronage of a big chief, who had taken on the role of a politician. These patronage exercises failed. The BASL membership voted for loftier ideals. |
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