In August, the BAKC selected Mr. Visal and three other lawyers – Nou Chantha, Hem Socheat and Chhy Sambath – to be candidates in the election.
Mr. Visal told Khmer Times yesterday that he was delighted to have been chosen and was eager to start work.
“I received 622 votes and Mr. Sambath received 244 votes, while Mr. Socheat and Mr. Chantha received only 40 and 11 votes respectively in the election,” he said.
“The BAKC election was very fair, equitable and smoothly processed,” he added. “In my upcoming mandate as the bar’s next president, I will modernize and improve the administrative systems of the bar and enhance the code of ethics for lawyers in the Kingdom.”
The election is held every two years and any lawyers with disciplinary warnings on their record are not allowed to run. Lawyers must be members of the BAKC for three years before they are allowed to run for president.
Outgoing president Bun Honn said the elections were important for lawyers to participate in as the organization had to choose a leader with enough “capacity, dignity, commitment and responsibility” in order to move the profession forward in Cambodia.
“The capacity and morality are a main necessity for every Cambodian lawyer to obey and join together to enhance social justice and the rule of law in the Kingdom,” he said.
Mr. Visal studied at the University of San Francisco School of Law in the US to qualify as a legal instructor in 1995 and secured a Master of Laws in International Human Rights from the University of Hong Kong in 2002.Mr. Visal is also a member of Nuon Chea’s defense team at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal.He has long been involved in the BAKC, formerly known as the Cambodian Bar Association (CBA). In October 2004, he was involved in a nasty fight for the presidency that spilled into the courts.
His opponent, Prime Minister Hun Sen’s lawyer Ky Tech, had been president of the then-CBA and was running for re-election. Mr. Visal won the election with 127 votes over Mr. Tech’s 108.
But Mr. Tech claimed Mr. Visal had breached campaigning rules and refused to give up his position, eventually taking him to court over the dispute. After two years of fighting, Mr. Tech won a close election in 2006 to officially give him the presidency. This year’s election did not have the same fireworks, but it did have its own allegations of corruption. Mr. Sambath, running against Mr. Visal, will appear at the Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) on Friday to answer questions about paperwork and business deals he helped broker that may have had issues.
Mr. Honn refused to go into detail about what exactly the ACU would ask Mr. Sambath, and ACU president Om Yentieng was similarly coy when asked about what Mr. Sambath had done to deserve the hearing.
The BAKC has also not been without its own controversy. The association is still reeling after a report last year from an international bar association slammed it as being beholden to the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) and outright refusing to represent anyone associated with the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP).
According to a lengthy and harsh report from the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute, published last September: “BAKC operates in a highly politicized manner and is widely regarded as a biased institution, fundamentally loyal to the CPP…rather than to its members and the legal profession.
“BAKC does not offer a robust defense to anyone who is not a member of the CPP…often neglecting entirely to defend members of the CNRP. Many expressed the view that the BAKC presently operates as a de facto part of the Cambodian government, rather than as an independent association established in order to protect the interests of Cambodian lawyers.”
At the end of the report, the International Bar Association recommended that the BAKC have its membership to the association revoked.
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