Ex-appointed Minister Zaid Ibrahim.

28.6.2009.

I first met him, I think, around 1989, when the Saujana Golf & Country Club's club house was just completed. My fellow golfers and I were having refreshments in between rounds, and he was there having a drink. A couple of years later when his name came out in the press in connection with some Kelantan UMNO-related news, I remembered.

Through the years, sporadically at first, his name would come out some more, and of course in the last few years his antics have caught media attention. When it was publicised recently that Zaid Ibrahim has joined PKR, I don't think anyone who actually noticed was surprised. My early impression since we first met was that this was a young Malay professional making his way through the world, later thinking, as the years went by, wow ! he's making waves. All positive vibes. 

Not now.

Within the month that Dollah  appointed him as the de facto Law Minister, he visited UiTM Shah Alam, his alma mater. This I know because my daughter called and asked who this guy was. She said he met some law students and spoke to them, but couldn't make head or tail of it, except he was saying how proud he was being an alumni. Watching his antics since that time, I don't think his alma mater is too proud of him now.

Basically there are two things that he has done publicly that demand comprehension: the ex-gratia payment of rm 5 million to Salleh Abbas, and joining PKR. 

In the ex-gratia case, the obvious sucker is of course Dollah.  As a lawyer Zaid should know that what he did was tantamount to contempt of court, because Salleh was duly convicted in a high-profile and well-documented court case involving prominent International judicial personalities. 

In the second case, all of Zaid's words and deeds since his Ministerial appointment must be hard for Dollah to swallow because of the treachery of it all. The least that Zaid should consider surely would have been to reciprocate the basic decency that Dollah had stupidly shown him when taking him out of the blue and putting him in a place of trust in his Cabinet. By joining PKR, Zaid is essentially saying that all that he had said, wrote, done, and probably sworn on, while in UMNO, were lies. In other words, he had been misguided, and only now, and in a convicted person like Anwar, has he found the truth.

In the Great Design of God, a man can find solace and comfort, high office even, in his short lifetime, regardless of his upbringing and his philosophy. I find neither comprehension nor respect for this particular individual. 

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