I never expected to win a Bar Council election, much less come in first, twice. In fact, I secretly hoped to lose my first attempt in 2022. That way, I could righteously declare that I offered myself for service, was rejected, and could happily retreat to my pile of personal projects with my conscience clear.

My campaign strategy, if you could call it that, consisted of writing a blog post, putting it on my social media accounts and doing nothing else. No WhatsApp broadcasts, no glossy posters, no team alignments. Just my name on a ballot and twenty-two years of practice behind it. To my complete bewilderment, this approach not only worked, it worked spectacularly well.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me first start with my father’s advice about when a lawyer should stand for election:

After he establishes himself at the Bar.

That was when he thought it appropriate to stand for elections to the Bar Council or State Bar Committees. As to why, for my father, we should only offer ourselves for the privilege and pleasure of service, no more than that. To expect remuneration for Bar-related matters to exceed the boundaries of propriety.

I felt there was sense in that and abided by it.

That was why I only stood for elections for the 2022/23 term, after about twenty-two years of active practice and (more or less) continuous contribution to the Bar and legal aid. Only then did I feel I’d established myself at the Bar.

I stood because I wanted to serve it in a different capacity; see what it was like, partly out of a sense of duty, partly out of curiousity and partly because I had been encouraged to stand for elections in the past. As a naive idealist and virgin to Bar Council elections, I thought I’d throw my hat in the ring and see what happened in my own fashion.

My thinking went: There was no need to explain or tout myself since I stood after I was established (or felt like I was). My track record over the previous years would show my contributions to and participation in the Bar Council. I had served in committees, advised and represented the Malaysian Bar, gave talks and participated in forums for the Bar and State Bars. I more or less regularly published writings and was reported in the media fairly frequently. All of that was in the public sphere.

I also thought the Bar election campaigning had gotten progressively distasteful, in some ways, mirroring our national elections. There’s all that bluster in the two month lead-up to the elections. Our learned brothers and sisters at law are spammed on their social media and messengers to vote for so-and-so. With each passing year, I hear more and more disturbing measures resorted to under the guise of ‘campaigning’.

That is not how advocates and solicitors should behave.

So, for me, there was no campaigning, no bothering anybody with this statutory election. All I felt I should do was express my interest in standing for election and be judged on my reputation. I stand and fell by it. Those who felt I could contribute ticked my name on the ballot sheet. Those who did not pass it by. I didn’t want to intrude on anyone beyond them seeing my name on the ballot sheet and deciding to elect me.

I did not go in thinking I absolutely had to win a spot. I did not expect to succeed on my first try. Dapat, dapatlah, (Get, get lah) kind of thing. Tak dapat, yay! (Don’t get, yay) In truth, a small part of me hoped I lost. That way, I could proclaim I was rejected despite offering myself, pretend to take umbrage in that, not participate in any more elections and focus on my growing pile of personal and firm projects.

Despite my resolve, my approach to standing for elections would be seriously tested.

First, I didn’t want to campaign, but I felt huge pressure to do so. After I announced I was standing, it felt like everyone advised me to campaign. I swear, during that time, even the cats in my house had a ‘Why aren’t you campaigning?’ look about them. It was intense. And when I sheepishly disclosed I was doing nothing, I received a torrent of advice (from the humans) about how campaigning was essential to win, how naive I was, and how I was facing certain loss if I didn’t campaign. On and on.

Finally, in a moment of weakness from the barrage of well-intentioned advice, I relented. I sent ten to fifteen messages to my friends inviting them to vote for me. I felt utterly spent and disgusted with myself after that. I felt like I crawled through a mile of the Cu Chi tunnels of Vietnam. I promised myself, I was not going to do anything that made me feel that way again.

My texted friends all responded affirmatively. If I lost, I knew where at least ten to fifteen of those votes came from. I did not follow through and send it to the many lawyers on my contact list. I just could not do it. It just went against my grain. Since then, I’ve never sent any messages to others asking them to vote for me.

Second, overtures were made to me to run in a team.

Before I get into that, I want to be clear about two things: First, there is nothing legally or morally wrong with teaming up for elections. I just think it’s ethically wrong because that’s not the culture we should have at our Bar. The Bar Council election isn’t a political election. It is an election to a statutorily enacted body under the Legal Profession Act 1976, primarily for the admission, organisation and management of advocates and solicitors.

It’s important to stay grounded.

Standing independently speaks of service, whereas running as a team lends itself to a preoccupation with competition and dominance. Teams are susceptible to groupthink and the tyranny of the influential minority. Teams are also like forcing an either/or choice on our colleagues at the Bar, which feels a bit juvenile to me since we are in theory, not just adults, but trained professionals with a supposedly high degree of intelligence. In theory, lah.

Second, there are a few things to appreciate about Bar Council and State Bar Committee elections. Three matters to be mindful of.

Firstly, there are two approaches to stand for a Bar Council election. Run independently or as a team. Traditionally, one ran independently. In the early 21st century, running in teams is regrettably normalised. The team members benefit from a sense of safety in numbers, but it is illusory. Not everyone in the team wins.

Secondly, regrettably there are factions at the Bar. Generally. for a Bar Council election there are three factions: Two factions comprise the opposing teams, and the third faction is those not aligned to either. I’ll refer to the latter faction as ‘the independents’. At State Bar Committee elections it’s often two factions, with no room for independents.

You will know who is on whose team from the campaign materials plastered all over social media. It is nauseatingly common for the team members’ names, faces, and Bar Council election candidate numbers to be displayed on a poster that looks like a compilation of employees of the month for the year. Needless to say, whoever is not in the poster is not on the team. Whoever is on neither team’s poster are the independents.

Thirdly, the teams at the Bar Council mirror a dimension of the political differences at the national level in the sense that there is the protection-of-Malay-interests side and the multi-cultural-oriented side. On the fringe, you have the small cluster of independents comprised of misfits like me. There are others. I don’t believe we independents are influential. Generally, the teams decide and act according to their given orientation, save in exceptional situations.

I have sketched the broader context and dynamics in which the Bar Council election takes place, and in which I was invited to join. Several overtures were made to persuade me. I appreciated where they were coming from. I could see the sense of running as a team. The bigger one’s team, the more influential one’s bloc.

Although, I felt somewhat like-minded with them, the problem was that I strongly disagreed with standing for a Bar Council election as a team. I wrote about this in ‘Campaigning for Bar Council Elections’ before I decided to stand for elections. Their best argument for me to join them was that I was more likely to win because I would benefit from their campaigning efforts.

After I had respectfully declined their overtures, I was invited for a video call with most of them, to, I suppose, make the case more emphatically. The following conversation is an amalgamation of the arguments to run as a team and my responses over several conversations.

“What’s the point of standing if you are not going to win? It is not enough to just offer yourself anymore. Others have to know you are standing. These days we have to remind and persuade others just to vote. It’s challenging to campaign on your own. There is a lot to do. In a team, we can pool those efforts, so it’s less of burden.”

“That’s the thing, I, uh, don’t plan to campaign. It’s okay if I don’t win.”

“You’re not going to do anything?”

“No. I stand to serve, not to win. If the members want me to serve, I will be elected. If not, I won’t. That’s fine. I don’t have to win.”

“But what if you lose? What will you do?”

“That’s okay. I actually have a lot of other things I could do to occupy myself.”

“You know, Fahri, before I was like you. I too believed that I could go at it on my own. I tried a couple of times and failed. In my first year that I ran as a team, I won. I wasted my efforts in those early years. I don’t want you to go through the same.”

“Thank you. I appreciate that. But as I said, I am fine if I lose. It’s about offering to serve.”

“Why won’t you join us?”

“It’s because I really object to running as a team for the elections. That’s not how we should be doing this. Each of us should run independently. I don’t want to feel remotely obligated to anyone or any side in deciding on something.”

“We also don’t like it, Fahri. But that’s how it is. And you don’t have to agree with us all the time. We don’t have a whip. But to make the most of it, you need to go in as a team to leverage of each other’s collective efforts. We cannot just stand and expect to get in these days.”

“That’s fair. But I am going to go all cliche on you. There’s this saying by Gandhi I believe in: Be the change you wish to see in the world or something like that. I believe we should run independently, so I have to do it. If I disagree with running in teams, I cannot now run in a team. Thank you for thinking well enough of me to invite me. But I will stand on my own and see how that goes.” (I later discovered although the quote aligned with Gandhi’s outlook, he never said that. Bloody internet memes!)

To my complete surprise, I came in eleventh in my first election for the 2022/23 term. That was also the first time sixteen spots were up for election instead of twelve. The number was increased at an Extraordinary General Meeting in September 2021.

I figured, if writing an essay on this blog about standing for election and posting it on my social media got me eleventh position, that was good enough for me! It was enough that I made the cut. I had no ambition for anything more.

So, when the elections for the 2023/24 term came around, I happily and confidently did the same. Wrote my essay, posted it up and went about my life. This time, I didn’t even text my friends. I call this the bare minimum.

To my complete shock, I came in first. If you asked me how that happened, I could not tell you. All I know is: stand when you are established (and it’s not necessarily after 20 plus years like me, for example, younger independents like fellow Bristolian, Gregory Das) and trust the universe.

There was some drama when the 2024/25 elections rolled around again. This time Muhammad Shafee Abdullah ran for the Bar Council elections, Najib Razak’s lawyer. Because of him, suddenly, the Bar Council elections was in the media spotlight.

Since my strategy of doing the bare minimum previously met with spectacular success, I persisted with it. This time, to my bemusement and amusement, I came in first again. The election was reported in the news as if it were some significant achievement and I, in turn, received congratulations even from members of the public like I won something significant.

Many times, I had to explain to non-lawyer friends and acquaintances that coming in first has nothing to do with being president of the Malaysian Bar.

There are three lessons I take away from that experience.

First, long-term strategy matters more than short-term tactics. The most valuable campaign asset isn’t a WhatsApp broadcast list or a slick posters; it’s years of consistent, meaningful contribution to the legal community and noble causes. When we’ve spent serious time and effort contributing to the legal literature and discourse, participating in Bar matters, helping colleagues without expectation of reward, and working for the greater good, our name on a ballot carries greater weight than a two-month campaign.

This isn’t political calculation; it’s about earning trust through genuine action for the greater good. The irony is that by the time we’ve built this foundation, we may find we need to campaign less, not more.

Second, authenticity trumps conformity. The pressure to conform to established campaign practices can feel overwhelming, especially when well-meaning colleagues insist that “this is how it’s done.”

But there’s profound power in maintaining our own unique and therefore indiosyncratic approach, even if it seems naive and senseless to others. When we resist the temptation to spam colleagues’ inboxes or join factional teams because everyone else does, we preserve something essential: our integrity. I’d like to think this resonates with lawyers who are tired of the same old election theatre, creating connections that anxious, trying-too-hard-too-late campaigns cannot replicate.

Third, service over success. Perhaps the most liberating approach to Bar elections is genuinely not needing to win. When we stand for election because we’re willing to serve, not because we need validation or glory, we free ourselves from the anxiety that drives desperate campaigning.

This mindset shift transforms the entire experience: rejection becomes feedback rather than failure, success becomes an opportunity rather than a necessity. Ironically, this detachment from outcomes perhaps make us appear independent and better able to decide in the interests for the Bar as a whole, instead of any faction. I’m guessing, of course. I could be completely wrong about this.

Finally, for those intending to serve the Bar or State Bar Committee, understand that we each have our unique path to walk. It is always tempting to follow the path of others who have found success because that path appears proven. But the path of success of others is not necessarily the same path of success for us. Our journeys are different as they are similar. It is important to appreciate that difference.

I speculate that the idea that lawyers vote in groups is flawed, or the hypothesis is not as strong as some think it is. Just because one is part of a group does not necessarily mean they will get elected. There are team members that make it and those that don’t. For this reason, I feel lawyers still vote predominantly for individuals instead of groups. But, only a proper study can answer this question.

Looking back on those three election cycles, I realised my father’s wisdom extended beyond just timing. My “bare minimum” approach wasn’t really minimal at all; it was the culmination of a track record of genuine contributions, distilled into its simplest form: an offer to serve or continue serving, nothing more, nothing less.

The real lesson isn’t about how to win Bar Council elections, but about remembering why we stand for them in the first place: to serve and to serve all equally for the greater good. Not to protect Malay interests, not to advance non-Malay interests, but for the interest of every Malaysian advocate and solicitor no matter what our race, belief and political views.

In an age of increasing political theatre at the Bar, there’s something radical about simply showing up, being yourself, and trusting that the good work we do speaks louder than any campaign ever could.

If that’s naive, then so be it.

Naivety works, too.