updated version

An emergency general meeting to discuss a motion censuring Bar Council leaders for not opposing a law which bans the council's office bearers from holding political posts failed to achieve a quorum today.

When the meeting commenced at 10.30 this morning, only 841 turned up - 1,182 short of the required quorum.

The quorum for the EGM is one-fifth of the total membership of the Bar, which consists of 10,106 lawyers.

Nevertheless, a few lawyers appealed to Bar Council president Mah Weng Kwai to proceed with a closed-door meeting on the issue instead.

At a press conference after the hour-long informal discussion with 200 over lawyers, Mah refused to elaborate on what was discussed.

"We heard what the lawyers had to say and that was it, they wanted to discuss the matter and we have heard them," said Mah.

At an earlier press conference, held to announce the lack of quorum, Mah said the EGM could not be postponed to another day and the matter could now be discussed at the annual general meeting.

"There is no provision in the Legal Professions Act that says that an EGM may be postponed to another day. If members of the Bar want to requisition the matter again it would have to be at the Malaysian Bar next year on March 15," Mah said.

He also took to task members of the Bar who were not present at today's EGM.

"If you have your ears to the ground, you would not be waiting for email notices on the EGM but would wait at the fax machine," he said.

Freedom of association

The EGM was proposed by a group of 75 lawyers who were unhappy with the council's stand on the right of lawyers to freedom of speech and association.

The move was prompted by the council's opposition to lawyer R Sivarasa who had applied to the High Court seeking a declaration that Section 46A of the Legal Profession Act 1976 was invalid because it violates the freedom of association provision in Article 10 of the Federal Constitution.

The council had opposed Sivarasa's application, and Mah was reported to have said that "the council objected to his application because it felt its independence must always be evident to the public".

The provision in the act disqualifies lawyers who are office bearers in political parties, trade unions and other political organisations, from holding office in the Bar Council.

Sivarasa was disqualified as a Bar Council member after he was appointed a vice-president of Parti Rakyat Malaysia.

Sivarasa told reporters after the closed-door meeting that he had argued* that the Bar Council, which forms the leadership of the Malaysian Bar, should not oppose the resolutions passed by members.

"The resolutions the Bar had passed in the 1978 AGM is binding. I hope the Bar Council will respond and assume a position in line with the resolution passed that year.

"The implications of the Bar Council acting in contradiction to the resolution is very serious," Sivarasa said.

Controversial position

When an amendment to include the controversial provision which excludes Bar Council members from holding positions in political parties in the Legal Profession Act was made in 1977, the Bar passed a resolution against the move at its AGM a year later.

The lawyers opposed the amendment because it imposed restrictions on the Bar to choose its own leaders and that it impeded its independence.

Mah, however, denied that the recent council's stand contradicted the 22-year-old resolution.

"When we had our annual general meeting in 1978, the 'unholy haste' the government made in adding that provision to the act was regretted but resolutions made by some young lawyers to repeal that provision was not passed by the Bar Council, so it is not contradictory," he said.

* Editor's note

: It has been pointed out to us that the structure of the sentence implies that Sivarasa had spoken at the meeting in that vein when in actual fact he did not even address the meeting (see [#3] clarification[/#] ). We apologise for any misunderstanding caused.