Bar Council chairperson Kuthubul Zaman Bukhari should not blame the high percentage required for a quorum (one-fifth of total members), for the EGM failure.

If one lowers the quorum to (say) one-tenth of total members does it not mean that 10 per cent who attend can claim to represent 90 per cent of the Malaysian Bar's position on any public issue?

One cannot press for removal of section 46A of Legal Profession Act that prevents lawyers of less than seven years standing from holding official positions on grounds that it denies the majority 75 per cent of the Bar (the younger members) from being represented an argument based on majority representation and yet at the same breath ignore the majority representation factor when seeking to pass an important resolution articulating the Bar's position!

We don't know why the quorum was not made up last Saturday. If the older lawyers were ensconced in comfortable juxtaposition in relation to the establishment from which they draw their clientele and sustain their standard of living, and were afraid of the lurking presence of special branch officers or informants, it does not explain the lack of fervour amongst the 75 per cent younger members of the Bar who ought to be generally more idealistic in fighting for judiciary's independence and other high lofty principles.

That issue should be no impediment when the majority of the Bar practise and reside in the Klang Valley.

Holding an EGM on Saturday morning would have meant a battle between supporting judicial independence and battling practical every day concerns - those who have families want to take their family members out or younger yuppies want to go out of town, and the rest are worried about traffic jams in the city due to various events connected to preparations for the Organisation of Islamic Conference meeting. It proved that practical concerns won!

Kuthubul has to understand the reality that it was not that judicial independence is not important to ordinary members of the Bar, but just that their practical concerns were more important.

The Bar Council chairperson laments that a quorum of one-fifth is too big for a total membership of over 10,000 members.

But with more than 1,000 new lawyers being added every year, he should realise that judicial independence isn't pressing enough to override practical concerns of finance that will top every individual lawyer's agenda!.

Before the Bar Council officials take on more important national issues, they should address the challenge of the more immediate plight of their members suffering increasing competition from unchecked entry of thousands of new members every year - all fighting over a diminishing market share of work, exacerbated by archaic professional rules set by the Bar such as limited discounts on scale fees, etc.

When there is more competition amongst members for bread and butter issues, there will be less unity amongst them to uphold the public principles adopted by the Bar collectively.

With the issue of criteria of judges' appointment and promotion heading for a collision with the Chief Justice, some members will seek to ingratiate themselves with the judiciary's and the prime minister's stand, in the hope of gaining favour when presenting their case in court or maybe to advance their political ambitions to get more plum jobs. At least in other cases, it is not to antagonise the Establishment.

Charity begins at home, and it is better that the Bar Council addresses pressing problems of financial independence of its members.

Meanwhile Prime Minister Dr Mahathir is having the last laugh because the best and Machiavellian strategy of muzzling the Bar is for the government to lower or liberalise entry requirements into the profession, maintain the one-tenth quorum, flood the market further with lawyers who will scurry around like hungry locusts searching for morsels of food, rather than taking up issues of public interest.