I do not know Zaid Ibrahim. I first heard of him when Pak Lah reshuffled his cabinet and appointed him as a Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department to oversee legal affairs and judicial reform. That same day a comment from one of my PAS friend over lunch made me take note. He asked me if Pak Lah knew who Zaid really is? I looked over to him across the table and waited for him to continue. He did not. I left it at that because I know better then to ask for more than what he was prepared to tell me.
The next time I heard about Zaid was when he said that the government had to apologise to Tun Salleh Abbas for his sacking as Lord President of the Supreme Court because:
"Serious transgressions has been committed by the previous administration…. and we are sorry."
I thought that while it sounded good it was only putting into words what Pak Lah himself felt about the whole matter!
By now I have heard of the rumblings within UMNO against Zaid. Pak Lah himself was having problems trying to deflect these rumblings. Matters came to a head when UMNO supreme council decided to sack Zaid for attending a PKR congress. If anything this confirms to me that people with money will do what they want to do – and Zaid had the money to attend a PKR congress while he was still in UMNO and damm the consequence - UMNO or no UMNO.
Less than a year later he was with PKR.
In the time that he has been with PKR he has made all the right noises and done the right things to make us think that this was a man prepared to work to make PKR stronger from within and without. It seems that everything he did was for the good of the party. I told myself that PKR had need of people like him.
But you are either pregnant or you are not. You are either a politician or you are not one. A politician without power or position is a politician with nothing. Zaid had already lost a by-election in the Hulu Selangor in April 2010 and he had nothing.
I started to see attempts by Zaid towards self-promotion of himself within PKR and Pakatan Rakyat – more as a statesman within Pakatan Rakyat - as the fabric that held Pakatan Rakyat together. The man prepared to do the hard work to keep things together for PR.
Just less then two months ago he had confirmed that he would not contest for any post within PKR and saw his role as the “campaign manager”.
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