(NEWZIMBABWE) Justice Makarau says young lawyers 'disrespectful'

COMMENT - On the MDC types believing the law does not apply to them...

Justice Makarau says young lawyers 'disrespectful'
By Lebo Nkatazo
Posted to the web: 12/01/2009 14:02:13

YOUNG lawyers of a certain political disposition are showing disrespect to judges, Judge President Rita Makarau said on Monday.

Opening the 2009 legal year of the Harare High Court, Justice Makarau said while senior lawyers generally respected judges, it was regrettable that the "young ones” were becoming bad-mannered.

Some lawyers have allowed their relationships with judicial officers to be strained because of politics, she said, while others had resorted to attacking the judiciary in the foreign media because decisions had not gone their way.

"We say enough is enough. We have turned the biblical cheek enough," Makarau said.

Meanwhile, Makarau told of her disappointment that lawyers for losing candidates in the March parliamentary and senatorial elections had filed electoral petitions with the High Court, many of which had nothing to do with legal matters but political grandstanding.

Makarau said almost all of the 135 applications could have ended at the lawyers’ desks had they shown more steel in dealing with their clients.

There were “fatal flaws” in most of the cases, she said.

Some lawyers had intoned that they were forging ahead with the applications as their political clients wanted them to proceed, despite the clear evidence they had no basis to get the results to be overturned, according to the judge.

Justice Makarau wondered what the concerned lawyers would do if appointed to the bench when they could not withstand political pressure.