One of my Dreams

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Temperature: 27 c

I remember the first few days of my study in HELP College, my classmates loved to ask each other this typical question: Why do you want to read law?

The most common answer was: Because I want to make a lot of money. (How naïve we were! I can’t see how making RM 2,000 a month falls into the category of “making a lot of money”. Fantasy is always better than reality.)

The most disgraceful answer was: Because I want to uphold justice. (Wasn’t that crappy? Upholding justice? How? By preparing the same old sale and purchase agreement again and again? Or issuing letter of demands to loan defaulters day in day out?)

The most pitiful answer was: Because my parents want me to become a lawyer. (Yeah, understandably, a lot of parents do want their children to become a lawyer. But, unfortunately, not everyone has the stomach for legal practice.)

The strangest answer was: Because my mathematic is not good. (What?! Are you telling me that you want to read the law books which are as thick as the phone books, just because you can’t count 1 to 10? Why not join the army? Or join politics? Why lawyer?)

My reason for doing law was a mixture of the above 3 answers (except that my mathematic was good). I was encouraged by my father to do law (he got me convinced that lawyers are not the smartest guys in the world, and he was right). I wanted to make big bucks (how can I be blamed? The lawyers in the Hong Kong series drive big cars and stay in big houses). Further, I also wanted to uphold justice. It was during the “reformasi” time and young kids like me believed that Anwar was victimized and brought to court on trumped-up charges. Anwar must be freed!

I told my classmates that I wanted to specialize in criminal law (ironically, the only criminal cases I have handled so far were defending a convicted dog-abuser and alleged prostitutes). I wanted to join the Anwar’s defence team to defend Anwar. My friends reminded me that by the time I am called to the Bar, Anwar’s case would have been closed. It was too late.

I then half jokingly said, “then I will defend Mahathir.” What?! Defending Mahathir? My friends of course laughed at me. Firstly, you need to charge Mahathir for some criminal offenses before you could defend Mahathir. Will Mahathir ever be charged in a court of law? On what charges? At that time, it was very difficult to imagine Mahathir being brought into a court with handcuff on. So my dream of defending Mahathir was more difficult than landing on the moon.

10 years has passed since I dreamed of defending Mahathir. Things have definitely changed. A once opposition leader who was barred from entering into the state assembly hall is now the Speaker of the state assembly hall. Who would have imagined that?

The March 8 political tsunami has not died down. There are more indications that the full impact of the tsunami has not been felt – more interesting things are coming. Last year, we have Lingam tape fiasco; now a high court judge openly said that judges were sent to “boot camp”. Looking at the events as they unfold, do you think there will be a day when my dream could come true? Stay tuned.

We are definitely living in exciting times.


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