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De facto Law Minister puts one crisis behind him to tackle less controversial challenges By Carolyn Hong, THE STRAITS TIMES
MALAYSIA'S de facto Law Minister Zaid Ibrahim was looking slightly worse for wear. 'I have barely slept in the last two days, the expectation is so high that we would do this right,' he told The Straits Times recently. The Minister in the Prime Minister's Department had reason to be nervous. His proposal for judicial reforms had been strongly opposed by his Umno colleagues and senior Cabinet ministers who felt he was opening a can of worms. But it had the backing of Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi, who had agreed to make amends for the 1988 judicial crisis. In that episode, which many see as the start of the free-fall in public confidence in the judiciary, top judge Salleh Abas and two other judges were sacked while three others were suspended for suspected politically motivated reasons. Twenty years later, the wound is still fresh. Datuk Zaid had proposed an apology, but the government did not go as far, offering instead an undisclosed sum in monetary compensation. However, more significantly, it announced the setting up of a commission to make the process of judicial appointments more transparent than the current one-man decision. It was a feather in the cap for Datuk Zaid. 'I hope that trust will be restored. There was never executive interference more clear than in the 1988 crisis.' He did not hide the fact that he was personally invested in getting this initiative off the ground - after all, his reputation as a reformist was at stake. Known to speak his mind on human rights issues, Datuk Zaid, 57, comes across as a liberal democrat. Not surprisingly, he did not win many friends in Umno for taking a different stand on issues ranging from preventive detention to race relations. An MP for Kota Baru in Kelantan in the last Parliament, Datuk Zaid was dropped as a candidate in the recent March 8 general election. No reason was disclosed, but it would not be far off the mark to say his views had grated on his party. There was also a cloud hanging over him - his 18-month suspension from Umno. Datuk Zaid was suspended after criticising the party's disciplinary board for investigating him for vote-buying during its 2004 elections. He was later found not guilty of money politics. The unexpected revival of his public career makes Datuk Zaid an interesting element in Umno although, politically, he does not have the ground support needed to climb the party hierarchy. Datuk Zaid used to run Malaysia's biggest law firm before giving it up to join the Cabinet. He has a strong reformist streak that dates back to the time he was active in the fiercely independent civil liberties group Aliran. But he later moved into mainstream politics, building up his law firm through lucrative work related to Malaysia's privatisation drive in the late 1980s. Zaid Ibrahim & Co is Malaysia's largest law firm, with about 140 lawyers, and has many regional offices, including in Singapore. He also led the Malaysian Muslim Lawyers Association, which is often seen as a pro-government rival to the hyper-critical Bar Council, which groups all of the country's lawyers. It was during that period when he appeared to defend the government's actions in the 1988 judicial crisis - actions that he has now made it his mission to rectify. But the Minister is quick to defend himself against claims of inconsistency from critics, who have included prominent lawyers as well as former premier Mahathir Mohamad. Datuk Zaid said that, at the time, he had merely called on the Bar Council to move on after the crisis and to accept the new top judge. 'Maybe I was not correct at that time, but I was never inconsistent,' he insisted. He said he had always felt that the sacking of top judge Salleh Abas was wrong. 'I went to see Tun Salleh, and told him myself then.' This episode is now firmly behind him. Today, in most people's eyes, he is a liberal reformist, and he credits Prime Minister Abdullah with supporting him. The achievement has bolstered his ability to undertake other reforms, albeit less controversial ones. Among other things, he wants to tackle the judiciary's infamous backlog of cases that number in the thousands. *********************************************** FACTS on Zaid Ibrahim: Born in Kota Baru, Kelantan Earned a law degree from the University of London, and is a Barrister-at-Law, Inner Temple Founded Zaid Ibrahim & Co in 1987 - now Malaysia's largest law firm Won the Kota Baru Umno division election in 2001 by four votes on his third attempt Suspended in 2005 for attacking Umno's disciplinary board Contested and won the parliamentary seat of Kota Baru in the 2004 general election, but was dropped in this year's poll He is viewed by some as the new face of professionals that Umno is recruiting. He is known for his forthright criticism of the government's handling of legal issues, such as the judiciary, human rights and Islamic law. A minister in the Prime Minister's Department, he has now been appointed to oversee legal affairs and judicial reform.
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