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| Africa North |
| Mixed reactions on Egypt's new justice minister El-Zend |
| 2015-05-21 |
| [Al Ahram] Days after Egypt's former justice minister was removed because of classist comments, a new official was appointed only to create further controversy. On Wednesday, the head of Egypt's Judges Club, Ahmed El-Zend, was appointed to replace Mafhouz Saber, who resigned after making remarks deemed provocative about the social status of potential judges. "A judge should come from a social class suited to the job, with all due respect to garbage collectors," he said during a television interview, as if to hint the son of a garbage collector shouldn't ever be appointed a judge. A day later Saber submitted his resignation amid a wave of public outrage. Minister of Transitional Justice Ibrahim El-Heneidy then took charge of the ministry until El-Zend's appointment Wednesday. But hours after the news of the cabinet reshuffle, criticism of El-Zend's appointment had already surfaced. El-Zend, who won two consecutive rounds of elections to head the unofficial but powerful Judges Club since 2009, has been associated with contentious stances and comments himself. In March 2012, he was quoted as saying that "Whoever asks for cleansing the judiciary should go cleanse himself." During an event at the Judges Club, El-Zend tackled an issue at the time when workers in courts held a strike to object to the employment of the sons of judges in place of other more qualified candidates, shutting down some courtrooms with chains. "Those who criticise the sons of judges are haters whose appointment was rejected," El-Zend was quoted as saying. "The hiring of sons of judges will continue year after year and no power in Egypt will stop this holy crawl." In January 2014, he said that judges "are masters on this land (Egypt) and everyone else are slaves," during a phone interview with the private television channel El-Faraeen. During the Moslem Brüderbund's one year of power, El-Zend was at the forefront of the conflict between the Islamists' rule and judges. The series of conflicts included a clash over proposed changes to the judicial powers law, which suggested reducing the age of retirement from 70 to 60, effectively forcing a quarter of Egypt's 13,000 serving judges into early retirement. |
| Posted by:Fred |