Bar president AG Kalidas said lawyers voted in favour of the motion during their extraordinary general meeting (EGM) today.
“We also call on the government to enact laws that give people the right to remove the assemblymen or MP due to loss of confidence in them,” he said.
Kalidas said the EGM also approved two other motions to increase the composition of Bar Council members from 12 to 16 as well as calling on the country to recognise and respect children’s rights.
“Children should not be discriminated against just because he or she was not conceived or born from a legally registered marriage,” he said.
Kalidas also told reporters that 2,735 people attended the virtual EGM today, which started at 10am and concluded at 4.40pm.
To a question on the motions regarding law journal subscriptions that were defeated during the meeting, Kalidas said this was not the first time a proposal had failed to gain support at Bar meetings.
“We had in the past seen other motions being defeated. Our members express their views without fear or favour,” he said.
Kalidas said that the council will conduct a post-mortem on why these motions failed to find favour.
“The entire idea was to lay down the available subscriptions and let members choose if they wanted them or otherwise.
“But based on the current (economic) situation, members do not intend to pay more. Any motions that have financial implications for our members require a two-thirds majority,” he added.
The motions on subscribing to the LexisNexis and Percetakan Nasional services did not get the two-thirds approval from lawyers while motions on CLJ Legal Network and Thomson Reuters were voted down.
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