Date: Nov 19, 2018 Source: The Daily Star Independent Beirut Bar elections defined by political affiliations Behbod Negahban| The Daily Star BEIRUT: A storm of fliers, campaign colors and social media links fills the Beirut Bar Association’s elections Sunday an apparently independent vote defined by all the resources and allegiances of big parliamentary politics. All four members elected this year for the 16-person board are affiliated with parties: one with the Free Patriotic Movement, one with the Kataeb Party and two with the Lebanese Forces (one an official candidate, the other merely backed). The effect has been to pull the Bar Association away from the needs of its members, lawyers said. Most of the board members elected Sunday were on the same council which, last week, was hit with walkouts and jeers when it did not announce a strike against the judges’ community, whom some lawyers accuse of disrespect, incompetence and repeated violations of lawyers’ legal immunity. “If you want an independent association, vote for someone who doesn’t have to take orders,” one lawyer, Saed al-Khatib said, blaming political influence for the lack of action against unscrupulous judges. Those political ties, he added, seep down to the association’s members. “Half of the [lawyers] who were supposed to be at [last week’s meeting] were having brunch.” If the Bar Association wants to tackle issues from the outside, he went on, it has to “be proactive” and “clean itself up first.” Even George Farhad, who was positive about the influence of political parties, said he supported the strike and chalked up its absence to a “mistaken vote” in the council. Other lawyers said the constant support of the party name gives board members cover for incompetence. Parties bring “people [in] who are not at the level demanded,” Mohammad Kassem said. “They take the title and they do nothing.” He added that lawyers’ insurance dues have skyrocketed in the last year. “No one knows why. No one knows the clauses of the contract,” he said. “You can ask every day and get no response.” Others said some clients have not paid them in light of the economic situation, thereby necessitating action. “I don’t want to spend my days suing my clients,” Robert Geagea said. So “I have to be diplomatic.” As in the past, the new board is also heavily dominated by sectarian considerations. All four of those elected Sunday were Christian. Reportedly trying to stave off a 16-member board of 15 Christians and one Druze, Maronite board member Wajih Masaad resigned with a year left on his term, allowing Jamil Kambris, a Sunni and Sunday’s fifth-place candidate, to take his place. There has so far been no significant backlash to the result. Though the board does not contain a single Shiite member, a lawyer from the Amal Movement told The Daily Star that all parties “should respect the result [of the election] and what the lawyers want.” Elias Shedid said he did not think the imbalance was “intentional,” but added that he was disappointed that Sunday’s voting pattern did not reflect the “unwritten understanding” that dominates other elections in Lebanon, “about how seats should be split up” among sects.