Is appointment of Zaki as Chief Justice the last nail in the coffin of Abdullah’s pledge of judicial reform?

When Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi finally bowed down to irresistible pressures in UMNO to scuttle his mid-2010 power transition plan and announced on October 8 that would not defend the post of Umno President, he said he would complete three reforms, including judicial reform, before he steps down as Prime Minister next March.

Is the appointment of Tan Sri Zaki Azmi as the Chief Justice to take over from Tun Abdul Hamid Mohamed, who retires compulsorily tomorrow, the last nail in the coffin of Abdullah’s pledge of judicial reform?

Datuk Zaid Ibrahim, who was appointed Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department after the March 8 general election by Abdullah to shepherd the reforms into reality, had implied that the appointment of a new Chief Justice to replace Hamid would be made under the new reform format and regime of a Judicial Appointment Commission.

But this is not to be and Zaid had resigned as the de facto Law Minister last month not only over the undemocratic abuses of power in the arbitrary use of the Internal Security Act to detain a senior woman Parliamentarian Teresa Kok, a senior Sin Chew reporter Tan Hoon Ching and blogger Raja Petra Kamaruddin but also at the “resistance” he encountered in Cabinet when trying to translate the promises of judicial reform into legislative reality.

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