COMMENT | Was Zaid’s unprovoked outburst justified?

“Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are.”

Benjamin Franklin

COMMENT | Despite switching political parties and leaving the political scene occasionally for short periods, Zaid Ibrahim has never been out of the news.

In the aftermath of the judicial crisis in 1987, when chief justice Salleh Abas and five judges were sacked, Zaid founded the Muslim Lawyers’ Association and became its first president.

He was accused of setting it up at the behest of the then prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad to counter the Malaysian Bar’s critical stand.

Years later in 2008, within days of his appointment as Minister in the Prime Minister’s department, Zaid asked the government to openly apologise for its handling of the crisis.

“I believe that the prime minister (Abdullah Ahmad Badawi) is big enough and man enough to say that we had done wrong to these people and we are sorry,” he was then quoted as saying.

Besides the apology...