HONG KONG, March 25 — Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam rejected a Bar Association nominee to a discreet panel that selects the city’s judges, according to a statement on Friday from the barristers’ body, appointing instead the Bar’s new chairman in an unprecedented switch.

The nomination of senior commercial barrister Victor Dawes, elected Bar chairman in January, was made after Hong Kong Chief Executive Lam in February sought another nominee instead of Neville Sarony, a veteran barrister put forward by the Bar in August last year, the Bar Association statement said.

It was the first confirmation of the delay, also unprecedented, surrounding Sarony’s nomination, reported by Reuters in January.

The work of the panel, known as the Judicial Officers Recommendation Commission (JORC), is being closely monitored by lawyers, scholars and diplomats amid concerns over judicial independence in the global financial hub.

The Bar statement said Dawes was the best candidate and that “the Bar Council believes it is in the public interest for a member of the Bar to be appointed to JORC without further delay.”

Dawes will take up his post on April 1, according to a Hong Kong government announcement on Friday.

The Hong Kong government did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the appointment of Dawes rather than Sarony.

Judicial independence is widely seen as vital to securing the future of the rule of law that underpins Hong Kong’s commercial and social freedoms following its handover from British colonial rule to Chinese sovereignty in 1997.

Nomination of judges by the commission is increasingly important as some of these jurists will rule on issues such as prosecutions under a sweeping national security law that Beijing imposed on the city in 2020 to punish subversion, secession and collusion with foreign forces.

The commission’s work is secret and it is a crime to reveal its deliberations or attempt to interfere with them.

The commission is headed by the city’s top judge, Chief Justice Andrew Cheung, but the Chief Executive must approve appointments to it - a power that dates back to the British colonial era but has until now not been used to reject nominees, lawyers and scholars have told Reuters.

Lam, Sarony and Cheung did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.

Dawes did not comment separately beyond the Bar’s issuing of its statement. — Reuters