CAIRO - Thousands of lawyers arrived at the Bar Association in central Cairo from the early hours of the morning to cast their ballots in the association's first post-revolution board elections, amid feelings of joy, optimism, and extreme rivalry among political powers, seeking to manipulate the union. The lawyers rubbed shoulders in packed rooms and tents erected in the backyard of their union where Ministry of Justice-commissioned officials and judges supervised the vote. "This is time the lawyers have selected the board of their own union without pressure from Mubarak's security agencies," said Moustafa Kamel, one of the lawyers who went to the union to cast his vote. "Now, we can select a board that really represents us," he told The Egyptian Gazette in an interview. Around 373 candidates contested the 15 seats of the board of the Bar Association, by far this country's largest professional union. Twenty four people, including some of the nation's top barristers, contested the top spot in the union. The Bar Association was always in the forefront of political activities under the former president, offering backing to anti-Mubarak activists. Some of Mubarak's most outspoken critics, including Ayman Nour, the founder of Al-Ghad (Tomorrow) Party, and Sameh Ashour, a leftist activist, are lawyers as well. At the Bar Association yesterday, patriotic songs were played and candidates' posters flew in every direction. The candidates used all tricks to lure their colleagues to their names before they entered the polling stations. Clear in this electoral campaigning atmosphere was a kind of strong rivalry between the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamist movements on the one hand, and liberals and leftists on the other. Muslim Brotherhood supporters distributed a list of candidates to the voters in their bid to rally up support for the list, which they called the "Islamic Law List". "Elections inside professional unions are very important to the Muslim Brotherhood," said Mamdouh Sherbini, a lawyer with links to the Muslim Brotherhood. "The Brotherhood aims to make comprehensive reform in society. The professional unions are part of this society," he told this newspaper in an interview. The Muslim Brotherhood, this country's most vibrant Islamist movement, which established its Freedom and Justice Party after the revolution, has also managed to win a sizeable majority in the Teachers' Union. Some people expect the movement to considerably control the nation's professional syndicates one after another. But here, liberals and leftists posed real opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood. Liberal and leftist lawyers said they would do everything possible to prevent the Brotherhood from controlling the union. "If they win majority in the union, the Brotherhood will serve their own associates only," Kamel said. "This means that our union will be a place for a privileged few in the future, not a union for all the lawyers" he added.
