KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 16 — Datuk Zaid Ibrahim said he has returned to Umno and wanted to help reform the party that expelled him in 2008.
The Star reported that the senior lawyer said he submitted his membership form during a special Umno briefing at the World Trade Centre here on August 27.
“My only intention is to help Umno. I have retired and there is not much work for me. I am not too busy and I go back to the party; I can help.
“I wish to see Umno more reform minded and more open into renewal where to do it, it must be from ‘within’,” he was quoted as saying during an event in Johor Baru today.
Zaid said he was advised that it would be difficult to try and 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,” he said.
Zaid first joined Umno in 2000 and won the Kota Baru seat for the party in the 2004 general election.
He was dropped during the 2008 general election, but was made a senator after Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi appointed him as the minister in the Prime Minister’s Department for legal affairs and judicial reform.
However, Zaid resigned from the Cabinet the same year over his disagreement with the detention without trial of DAP lawmaker Teresa Kok, blogger Raja Petra Kamaruddin, and journalist Tan Hoon Cheng.
Umno initially suspended him from the party, before sacking him for attending the events of rival parties.
In 2009, he joined PKR but resigned a year later after an abortive bid for the deputy presidency against Datuk Seri Mohamed Azmin Ali.
Zaid then formed Parti Kesejahteraan Insan Tanah Air (Kita) in 2010 but resigned as its chief in 2012.
After Kita, Zaid joined DAP in 2017 and was appointed as the Kelantan state chief but he left his fourth political party in 2020.
