BEIRUT: Lawyers from the March 8 and March 14 coalitions are gearing up for Sunday’s Beirut Bar Association elections, as March 8 lawyers appear split over who to back for the association’s top post.

About 6,000 lawyers who paid their annual subscriptions are eligible to vote. Voters will select three members of the council as well as its head.

Amal Haddad, the incumbent head, was supported by both March 8 and March 14 groups.

Running on the March 8 list are Nuhad Jabr, supported by Speaker Nabih Berri’s Amal Movement, George Nakhle, from Michel Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement, and Antonio Hashem and Ibrahim Awada, both backed by Hezbollah.

Both Jabr and Hashem are in the race, running for the post of the head of the bar association.

March 8 groups have agreed to support their four candidates in the first round of elections, which sees the election of four members to the 12-member council.

Hashem and Jabr have agreed that the candidate who receives the lower number of votes in the first round will withdraw his candidacy for association head in the second round. This is meant to ensure that March 8 votes will not be split between the two.

The 6,000 eligible association members will choose the head in a second round of elections.

But some lawyers from the March 8 coalition said that FPM lawyers are outraged by the fact that the FPM reneged on its previous support for Jabr as a candidate for the association’s top post, deciding to support the Hezbollah-backed Hashem instead.

The lawyers said the disagreement might prompt the pro-FPM lawyers to refrain from casting votes for the March 8 list, in a bid to guarantee that their candidate of choice receives a higher number of votes in the first round.

“Hundreds of FPM lawyers are outraged and insist on not abandoning Nuhad Jabr out of loyalty to him,” a March 8 lawyer told The Daily Star.

Other lawyers from the same group noted that Jabr defended retired General Fayez Karam, an FPM official, free of charge.

Karam was arrested in summer 2010 on charges of collaborating with Israel. In September, he received a two-year sentence with hard labor. But in October, the Military Appeals Court ordered that he be retried.

March 14 opposition groups are showing more cohesion, having decided to back three candidates: Pierre Hanna from the Lebanese Forces, George Estefan from the Kataeb (Phalange) Party, and Nabil Toubiya from the National Liberal Party for the head of the association.

The group is outspoken in its intention to guarantee that the association and its new members will be in “the forefront of associations working on establishing a sovereign state and making sure that the association does not fall into the hands of Hezbollah.”

Lawyers backed by Hezbollah have adopted a slogan “we want a resistance association with a resistance head of the Bar.”

“It is up to each lawyer in Lebanon to assess this slogan and what it means,” a March 14 lawyer told The Daily Star.

Amid the polarization between the two camps, several independent candidates are in the race, such as Nabil Meshantaf, running for the top post.