My Story: Justice in the Wilderness by Tommy Thomas (review)

Tan Sri Tommy Thomas has had a highly distinguished legal career, in the course of which he served as Attorney General in Tun Dr Mahathir's Pakatan Harapan government for 20 months from June 2018 to the end of February 2020.

His autobiography, reviewed here, rapidly hit the top of the bestselling books chart in Malaysia upon publication, chiefly because of his candid insights into Dr Mahathir's short-lived government. The rise to the top of the bestseller list was boosted by at least 40 police reports within days of publication by various parties objecting to the content, not to mention rumours that the book was likely to be banned.

The book starts conventionally with an account of Thomas' Malayali Syrian Christian origins in the Mar Thoma branch of the faith in Kerala, formerly known as Malabar Coast in the south west of India.

Thomas' father left Kerala for Malaya in 1939. He was employed as a technical assistant in the Public Works Department in Banting for the rest of his working life. Together with his wife, also from a distinguished Mar Thoma family in Kerala, the couple provided a secure childhood in a prosperous middle-class family for Thomas and his siblings.

The first sixty pages recount Thomas' childhood and education, at the Victoria Institution, and then in United Kingdom (UK), reading Law at the University of Manchester in the years 1969–1975. They reflect his enthusiastic participation both in his course and student activities, typical of a young liberal at that time.

The only controversial note in the early pages of the book occurs in his account of the 13 May 1969 racial riots in Kuala Lumpur, just before Thomas left for UK. He compares Suharto's seizure of power from Sukarno in the 1965 coup with Tun Abdul Razak's assumption of power, succeeding Tunku Abdul Rahman as prime minister after the May riots.

On returning to Kuala Lumpur in 1975, Thomas joined the legal firm of Skrine & Co. on the recommendation of V. C. George. He provides portraits both affectionate and impressive of the partners in the company at that time. He himself became a partner in the firm in July 1982, at the young age of 30.

He became heavily involved in the Malaysian Bar's activities, both sporting and professional, noting the unfortunately edgy relationship between the Bar and the Attorney General, or his Chambers for much of the time. An example of this was the reluctance of Tan Sri Abu Talib Othman, then AG, to agree to, let alone act on the recommendations of the Tun Hussein Onn Committee, which reported on the Bar's disciplinary procedures against lawyers. Thomas was the youngest member of the Commission.

The 1980s witnessed a series of financial scandals, exacerbated by gross conflicts of financial interest involving senior politicians.

These inexorably came to a head at the end of the 1980s with the splitting of the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO—Malaysia's principal political party at the time) into Teams A & B, the political roundups and arrests under Operation Lallang, and Justice Harun Hashim's totally unexpected order that UMNO should be dissolved. This ultimately gave rise to the sacking of the Lord President, Tun Salleh Abbas, with extraordinarily far reaching and long-term effects on the independence of the Malaysian judiciary. Thomas played a significant but relatively junior role in the legal brouhaha that followed. However it gave him vital insights into the vindictive and petty behaviour of some of the senior legal luminaries who were involved.

Disillusion and disgust with Malaysian law after the Tun Salleh episode persuaded Thomas and his newly married wife Sherry to emigrate to Vancouver in 1988. Fortunately for Malaysia this venture into the Canadian legal system did not work out, and by May 1991 Thomas was back with Skrine & Co. and again involved with the Bar Council, where he served as secretary 1995–1997. Towards the...