Zaid Ibrahim: Can our next CJ not be like Zaki Azmi?

Kita president Zaid Ibrahim has swung a broadside into outgoing Chief Justice Zaki Azmi’s record as the country’s top judge, and voiced hopes that his successor not follow in his footsteps.

In a piece posted on his blog Zaid Untuk Rakyat today, the former de facto law minister ( left ) slammed Zaki’s past decisions and statements as having “bordered on the absurd”, and said people have had “too many CJs who were administrators and judicial spokespersons for political masters.”

“Small men holding high positions bring shame to the judiciary and to the country,” said Zaid, who left Umno to join PKR before quitting the opposition party to head Kita.

Eyebrows were raised in October 2008 when it was announced that Zaki, who had served as lawyer for Umno and sat as the party’s deputy chairperson of its disciplinary board, would helm the country’s judiciary following the retirement of Abdul Hamid Mohamed.

Noting Zaki’s decision to resign from the disciplinary board due to his refusal to tarnish the good name of the board with a personal scandal, Zaid it was subsequently surprising to learn that Zaki had agreed to take up the post of CJ during the prime ministership of Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.

“Clearly, he cared more for Umno than the judiciary, since he then accepted the post of a Federal Court judge when Pak Lah (Abdullah) offered it to him,” he commented.

Since then, said Zaid, some of Zaki’s decisions have been mind-boggling, such as his  pronouncement that a receiver and manager can have two principals.

“He is more suited to be Umno’s lawyer or chairman of Umno’s conglomerates than a chief justice,” said Zaid.

In the case of S Shamala who has challenged her former husband’s conversion of their children to Islam, Zaid noted that Zaki ( above ) had declined to answer questions put to him over several important points of constitutional law.

Zaki, said Zaid, had told the lawyer who posed the questions - over the position of several syariah court enactments and the conversion of minors - that the queries were more political rather than legal and constitutional.

“The ramifications may be political, but it is not the chief justice’s job to manage political fallout,” quipped Zaid.

Most recently, Zaid recounted, Zaki “made another landmark statement” when he remarked in the Federal Court that it was only NGOs that wanted Sarawak natives to stay in the jungles instead of agreeing to be being relocated for ‘development’ purposes, said Zaid.

He was referring to the case of Bato Bagi and Jalang Paran who are seeking redress for the loss of their native customary rights.

Zaki, who had declared that the interests of the majority should be of higher priority over the minority, noted that out of the tens of thousands of natives who had to relocate because of the Bakun hydroelectric dam project and a proposed pulp mill, only a handful had decided to formally challenge the government's takeover of their land.

“I'd say it's only the NGOs who want to leave the natives in the jungle," Zaki said, arguing that the nation must come before individuals.

Zaid, citing the federal constitution’s guarantees of protection of all citizens and for justice, asked whether Zaki did not believe members of minority communities have rights.

“We expect this from Perkasa, not from our chief justice,” said Zaid.

He expressed hopes that Chief Judge of Malaya Arifin Zakaria ( right ) - widely expected to succeed Zaki as CJ - would remain the “good lawyer” that he is and maintain a sufficient dose of humility to dispense justice, “especially to the minority and the oppressed”.

“Given all this, it’s about time we had a chief justice who is a lawyer first. Of all the  cases that have been decided at the highest level in the last 20 years, so many have been hard to reconcile or understand because they were written by judges who did not understand the law.

“A chief justice like Ariffin, and the brother judges who follow him, can hopefully change this,” said Zaid.