KUALA LUMPUR – Fourteen years since being expelled from Umno, Datuk Zaid Ibrahim revealed that he has returned to party folds, expressing hopes to reform the party.
According to a report by The Star, Zaid was quoted as saying that he submitted his membership form during a special Umno briefing at the World Trade Centre on August 27.
The senior lawyer expressed his intention to help the party, saying, “I have retired and there is not much work for me. I am not too busy, and I can go back to the party; I can help.
“I wish to see Umno more reform-minded and more open to renewal…to do it, it must be from within,” he told reporters after attending a talk organised by Johor Baru BN at Balairaya Stulang Baru in the southern state yesterday.
He admitted that his friends had said it was difficult to attempt to change Umno from the “outside”.
"Finally, I feel that it is better for me to be with Umno, even though the reform might take a long time.”
The former minister first joined Umno in 2000 and won the Kota Baru parliamentary seat for the party in the 2004 general election (GE).
During the 2008 GE, he was dropped as a candidate but was made senator after then prime minister Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi appointed him as minister in the Prime Minister’s Department for legal affairs and judicial reform.
The same year, he then resigned from cabinet and was subsequently suspended from Umno.
Zaid joined PKR in 2009 but resigned a year later, after making a failed run against Datuk Seri Mohamed Azmin Ali for the deputy president post.
In 2010, he then formed Parti Kesejahteraan Insan Tanah Air but resigned as its president in 2012.
In 2017, he joined DAP, his fourth political party, and was made the state chairman of Kelantan.
However, he left the opposition party in 2020. – The Vibes, September 16, 2022
