‘Most brutal fight’ at March 14 Bar Council AGM
We will defend Bar without fear or favour, president Leong warns backers of second legal body.
(Free Malaysia Today) – The Malaysian Bar Council president Christopher Leong has told the proponents of an alternative Bar Council to get ready for “the most brutal fight” at its annual general meeting on March 14.
“They will have a fight on their hands… we would defend the Malaysian Bar vociferously and mightily, without fear or favour,” Leong told Malay Mail Online.
The Malaysian Bar, which represents lawyers in peninsular Malaysia, has some 16,000 members.
Malaysian Volunteer Lawyers Association had, in an interview with Utusan Malaysia last Sunday, accused the Bar Council of being part of “anti-establishment politics” and proposed an alternative body to run parallel to the council.
On February 11, Leong had highlighted “glaring anomalies” in Anwar’s prosecution, which he had said fuelled perception that Anwar’s case was a political persecution rather than a criminal prosecution.
Then a group of 100 lawyers that called itself G100 demanded that Leong apologise and retract his statement.
Critics have pushed for an alternative legal body and accused the Bar Council of being pro-opposition, even before Leong was voted the president of the Malaysian Bar in 2013.
