So I received a Malaysia Think Tank newsletter today and, surprise, surprise, it seems that the controversial Zaid Ibrahim has joined the group’s advisory board. The news was covered in The Star as well, but I didn’t notice it earlier. For those out of touch, this was the guy who resigned from his post as a minister in the Prime Minister’s department after the government used the ISA law on three prominent people earlier this year and eventually got sacked from UMNO after attending events organized by opposition parties DAP and PKR. People were expecting him to join one of the opposition parties, especially after Anwar Ibrahim commented that the PKR would be delighted to have him, but he declined without ruling it out entirely.

If Zaid Ibrahim really does lean libertarian, it’s not so surprising that he would be uncomfortable being a member of any of the main opposition parties since all of them are explicitly socialist. Malaysia doesn’t have a libertarian political party yet, but this is surely a good sign of things to come.

In other news reported in the newsletter, the Malaysia Think Tank apparently won an award from the Atlas Economic Research Foundation for its work in spreading libertarian thought in Malaysia by promoting Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. Now, I’m not sure how exactly they promoted the novel because The Fountainhead is probably still my favorite novel and if something was being done about it in Malaysia, I’d expect to have heard something, but that’s still great, great news.