Head of the Bar Association on the Commercial Registry in Baabda: Closure is Unjust and Silence is Unacceptable

Issued by the Head of the Beirut Bar Association the following:

Denunciation and condemnation are no longer sufficient in the face of the persistence in continuing the closure of the Commercial Registry in Baabda, and the accompanying state of unjustified neglect and procrastination in addressing this crisis, despite the grave repercussions affecting citizens' rights, the regularity of legal and commercial transactions, and the proper functioning of justice.

This reality is not justified by any circumstance, and it is not permissible to hide behind the war and use it as a local excuse. Rather, the external war should be an incentive to strengthen the interior, instead of persisting in the closure and what it constitutes as a serious infringement on legal and economic security, and the severe damages it inflicts on lawyers, litigants, owners of institutions and companies, and the paralysis in completing transactions, in the absence of any serious and swift measures to address the current situation.

In this situation, I affirm that the Bar Association, from its position of responsibility and outside its jurisdiction, has taken all reasonable arrangements to help accelerate the restoration of work in the registry, to no avail.

Therefore,

And while I warn that continued negligence is no longer acceptable under any pretext, I call upon the competent official and judicial authorities to take immediate and decisive action to reopen the Commercial Registry and restore its work, and to take measures sufficient to prevent the recurrence of this disruption that strikes at the very heart of the interests of people and institutions.

I also reserve, on behalf of the Bar Association, the right to take appropriate positions and measures in defense of the rights holders, to uphold the dignity of justice, and to ensure the proper functioning of judicial and administrative public facilities.

Silence about this vacuum is no longer permissible; rather, it has become unjust towards the rights holders.