Rashan­da Mc Ken­na

Se­nior Coun­sel Is­rael Khan has ex­pressed dis­sat­is­fac­tion over re­cent oc­cur­rences with­in the Law As­so­ci­a­tion. "What is iron­ic about this whole af­fair is that lawyers are sup­posed to ad­vise peo­ple of their rights and oblig­a­tions and on such an im­por­tant mat­ter we could not ad­vise our­selves," said Khan.

Last Mon­day, High Court judge Mau­reen Ra­j­nauth-Lee ruled that it was an or­der of Par­lia­ment for coun­cil mem­bers to pay an­nu­al sub­scrip­tion fees in or­der to vote, be elect­ed, or elect oth­er mem­bers of the coun­cil. The an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing has since been post­poned un­til af­ter April 18, in or­der to fa­cil­i­tate the sub­scrip­tion pay­ments of 300 state at­tor­neys.

Khan said the law of­fi­cers have been vot­ing for the past 25 years with­out pay­ing their an­nu­al sub­scrip­tions to the Law As­so­ci­a­tion. He fur­ther stat­ed: "SC Dana See­ta­hal ob­tained le­gal opin­ion from Michael de La Bastide since Feb­ru­ary 14, 2012, ad­vis­ing her that un­less mem­bers paid their sub­scrip­tions they could not vote."

Khan claimed she kept that le­gal opin­ion to her­self and did not bring it to the at­ten­tion of her coun­cil mem­bers un­til the court mat­ter had been filed. "This is the sort of ir­re­spon­si­ble lead­er­ship of the As­so­ci­a­tion I speak about in my man­i­festo. It is not just about hav­ing a fan­tas­tic Bar din­ner and a very good wine and cheese par­ty. For the first time in the as­so­ci­a­tion's his­to­ry, we had a fam­i­ly day with lots of rum and roti with about 15 lawyers and their fam­i­ly, out of a mem­ber­ship of 2,000 lawyers. Some­thing is def­i­nite­ly wrong," said Khan.

Law As­so­ci­a­tion a "tooth­less tiger"

How­ev­er, when Sun­day Guardian con­tact­ed See­ta­hal, she de­nied re­ceiv­ing any le­gal opin­ion from de la Bastide on Feb­ru­ary 12. She said: "The coun­cil had tak­en a fi­nal de­ci­sion whether to get a le­gal opin­ion or go to court when I asked de la Bastide as a per­son­al favour to me to look at the leg­is­la­tion."

Fur­ther­more, See­ta­hal stat­ed that the coun­cil, in a meet­ing on Feb­ru­ary 28, took a de­ci­sion to seek a ju­di­cial in­ter­pre­ta­tion sum­mons be­cause it was felt that what­ev­er le­gal opin­ion was ob­tained would still be the sub­ject of a ju­di­cial chal­lenge. "I got my opin­ion from de la Bastide, be­cause he, hav­ing been a for­mer pres­i­dent of the law as­so­ci­a­tion him­self, did not feel com­fort­able giv­ing an of­fi­cial opin­ion. I got this opin­ion on Feb­ru­ary 29, and I gave that opin­ion when the mat­ter came to court to our lawyer for his as­sis­tance and at his re­quest, with de la Bastide's con­sent. I al­so passed on a copy of that opin­ion to the sec­re­tari­at of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion for their records."

In re­sponse, Khan said: "The Law As­so­ci­a­tion as it now stands is a tooth­less tiger and pres­i­dent Dana See­ta­hal is the tooth­less mouth­piece of the tiger." In a sep­a­rate is­sue re­gard­ing See­ta­hal, Khan sug­gest­ed his pres­i­den­tial ri­val had been en­raged by his de­ci­sion to chal­lenge her.

He said she vi­cious­ly at­tacked him in the me­dia, when she said "with friends like Khan, who needs en­e­mies?" See­ta­hal's re­marks came af­ter Khan ac­cused her of fine-tun­ing the coun­cil in­to a glo­ri­fied dance com­mit­tee which had achieved noth­ing of sub­stan­tial worth.

Khan main­tained he had a gen­uine con­cern to up­lift the Law As­so­ci­a­tion and could not un­der­stand See­ta­hal's at­tack on his in­tegri­ty while she had more press­ing Law As­so­ci­a­tion mat­ters to han­dle. See­ta­hal de­clined to com­ment fur­ther in any pro­nounce­ments made by Khan, who felt that he could not sac­ri­fice his prin­ci­ples for the sake of a friend­ship.

Khan asked rhetor­i­cal­ly: "Why should I ig­nore my urge to trans­form the Law As­so­ci­a­tion in­to some­thing mean­ing­ful? Af­ter the elec­tions, I be­lieve our 37 years will gel."

As­tro­log­i­cal pro­nounce­ments

Both Khan and See­ta­hal are very strong per­son­al­i­ties and Khan had his own as­tro­log­i­cal pro­nounce­ments to de­ter­mine who was best suit­ed for the po­si­tion of Law As­so­ci­a­tion Pres­i­dent. Khan, a na­tive Leo said his in­nate qual­i­ties are "con­fi­dence, am­bi­tion, gen­eros­i­ty, in­de­pen­dence, loy­al­ty, courage, pas­sion and lead­er­ship."

How­ev­er he said, See­ta­hal, a na­tive Can­cer "is full of con­tra­dic­tions, so when it comes to in­de­pen­dence she may de­pend on peo­ple for emo­tion­al sup­port and en­cour­age­ment. "I am a rev­o­lu­tion­ary leader, an in­no­v­a­tive leader and a man who is not afraid to stand up for lawyers. Leos are fierce­ly in­de­pen­dent and born lead­ers," said Khan.