For Zaid Ibrahim, the wheel has come full circle

 

From Terence Netto

Zaid Ibrahim has gone round the Malaysian political landscape and returned to the point where he first started out.

He has re-joined Umno, his first political affiliation, after having left 14 years ago.

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Zaid has played political hopscotch for so long that déjà vu occurs when sorting out the reasons he offers each time he hops.

It is more useful to say who Zaid is, rather than examine the reasons for his switching allegiances.

Zaid is a Malay liberal, someone whose conception of Malay happiness does not redound to non-Malay unhappiness.

Such a person would be worth his weight in gold to a polity so divided along lines of race and religion that people do not know where to start to bring others together.

Zaid would like to bring the Malaysian people together but he has little notion of how to go about it.

The pity of it is that when years ago he had built up the largest legal firm in the country, with several non-Malay lawyers in its stable, he was in the best position to be an example to his people as a successful legal entrepreneur.

The role showed him as capable of drawing Malay and non-Malay talent, and importantly, staying unthreatened by the latter, thereby being an example of a successful professional at ease in a diverse society.

Malays are more susceptible to the influence of successful Malay entrepreneurs, more so when these are seen as being at ease in wider society.

But Zaid lacks stamina.

He gave up what he was doing well and plunged into what he has proven to be bad at – party and electoral politics.

Politics, as the sociologist Max Weber observed, is the work of strong and slow boring through hard boards. One has to have endurance for this type of work. Zaid is too much of a maverick for the hard work of stamina-building.

Having re-joined Umno, he now says he wants to work for its reform from within. This is a task that requires doggedness. Zaid is kidding himself if he thinks he has the persistence.

He has gone back to where he should not have left.

Zaid Ibrahim is a man who had abandoned his forte, legal entrepreneurship, for a faddish enthusiasm — party politics. That’s probably why he could never stand pat for long. - FMT

Terence Netto is a senior journalist and an FMT reader.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.