Anwar Kamal wins LHC Bar president seat | Pakistan Press Foundation (PPF)

Pakistan Press Foundation

Anwar Kamal wins LHC Bar president seat

LAHORE – Anwar Kamal of the Professional Group has notched up the president seat of the Lahore High Court Bar Association for the year 2008-09 by imposing a crushing defeat on Pervez Inayat Malik, a candidate of Khosa Group.
Kamal managed to get 3,507 votes while Inyat could get only 1,068 votes.

All the four seats of the LHCBA have won by the candidates who have a clear cut stand on the restoration of November 2nd judiciary or they had played a role, no matter how big it is, in their ongoing movement.

The Professional Group, headed by Hamid Khan, has wholeheartedly supported the deposed judges. President Supreme Court Bar Association Aitzaz Ahsan had also announced his support for Anwar Kamal.

The Khosa Group’s defeat was written on the wall after one of their members; Ahsan Bhoon became LHC’s judge during his tenure as the LHCBA president. Adding insult to injuries, the head of their group Senator Latif Khan Khosa attended Bhoon’s oath taking ceremony. The lawyers turned him and expressed their resentment in bar meetings and finally on the polling day by discarding their candidate.
The vice president seat went to Mian Muhammad Aslam with 1,575 votes followed by Babar Khilji who secured 1,003 votes. Chaudhry Zafar Iqbal (966) and Mian Jamil Akhtar (989) also contested for VP seat. Mian Aslam is also a committed man with lawyers’ cause.

Rana Asad Ullah won the secretary seat with 1,846 votes. He is the younger brother of the PML-N newly elected MPA Rana Mashud Khan advocate and was fully supported by the PML-N lawyers. Rana Mashud himself remained present at bar for whole daylong asking voters to vote for his brother.
He had a clear edge over his opponents from day one not because he was a potential candidate but of the PML-N’s firm stand on judges’ restoration.

His opponents Zahid Hussain Mlaik (946), Sahir Mahmood Bhatti (714), Mian Irfan Ikram (553) and former finance secretary Wasim Mumtaz Malik secured 159 votes.

Syeda Feroza Rabab has became the new finance secretary of the bar by bagging 1,802 votes while Aneela Cheema got 1,419 votes and Zahid Sikandar could only manage 1,352 votes.

The turnout of the votes remained on the lower side as only 4,615 lawyers exercise their right of votes out of total 9,386 eligible voters. The turnout was reckoned 49 per cent.

Wild celebration erupted among the supporters of the winning candidates as they cheered and burst into chants against Pervez Musharraf and the PCO-judges.

Hilarious supporters were hugging each other while some of them danced on drumbeats. Others were distributing sweets and garlanding their winners.

Addressing the lawyers, Anwar Kamal reiterated that the lawyers struggle for restoration of judges would reach to its logical end.

He said, “We would bring November 2nd judges back to their seat at any cost. They are constitutional judges. We don’t accept present the PCO-judges.”

He said that there was a simple way to restore judges. If the decision of Supreme Court’s seven-member bench given on November 3rd were implemented in its letter and spirit, everything would go back to its November 2nd position.
He also made it clear that the lawyers did not accept Pervez Musharraf as president.

His fate would be decided once the independent judiciary was reinstated.

Rana Asadullah also expressed the same views saying, “He will be part and parcel of legal fraternity’s struggle and will press hard for judges’ restoration.”

Hafiz Abdul Rehman Ansari, member Pakistan Bar Council, has congratulated newly elected office bearers and said that the LHCBA had a big role to play on judgesÂ’ issue in the coming days. He urged them to remain sincere adhered to lawyers cause otherwise they would be ruined like those who betrayed lawyers for personal gains.

There was a lot of festivity at the LHCBA as it was last Saturday of February which was traditionally day to elect new body for the LHCBA during which the bar members including former judges of superior courts, ex-ministers and newly elected parliamentarian votes for their favourite candidates.

The prominent voters included Justice (r) Karamat Nazir Bhindari, Justice (r) Fakhar-un-Nisa Khokhar, Justice (r) Nasira Javed Iqbal, Justice (r) Malik Saeed Hassan, Justice (r) Aamir Raza A Khan, Justice (r) Ameer Alam Khan, ex-federal ministers Ch Aitzaz Ahsan, SM Masood, Senator Latif Khosa, ex-MNA Farid Paracha, newly elected national and provincial assemblies members Yasin Sohal, Rana Mashhood and Uzma Bukhari, Pakistan Bar Council members Hamid Khan, Hafiz Abdur Rehman Ansari, Supreme Court Bar Association vice president Ghulam Nabi Bhatti and secretary Amin Javed.

Caretaker provincial minister and former Advocate General Punjab Maqbool Elahi Malik also cast his vote.
Source: The Nation
Date:2/24/2008