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Rebranding Zahid

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The DPM seems to be actively taking measures to repair his image.

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One of the common accusations thrown at Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi is that he talks like a tough guy. It hasn’t helped that he once claimed friendship with the Tiga Line group, which many members of the public see as a gang of hoodlums.

At the height of the siege on Prime Minister Najib Razak, many looked nervously at Zahid, fearing the thought of this man stepping up to take over as the nation’s Number One leader. The fear of a more authoritarian government was understandable, given Zahid’s ideology and principles, at least as he articulated them.

Certainly, the foot-in-mouth tendencies he has exhibited do not fill Malaysians with confidence in our country’s Number Two. For one, it is hard to like a grown man who can say, “Don’t expect me to warn you. Expect me to take action. This is Zahid Hamidi, okay?”

However, it appears that our DPM has lately been rebranding himself as a more moderate, even-handed politician.

In his reaction to a recent exhibition of works by controversial anti-government cartoonist Zunar, we saw Zahid toeing the moderate line. He said, “It is okay to criticise, but not to insult” or something to that effect. That was really the most even handed statement coming out of the government on the issue, especially when you contrast it with Salleh Keruak’s arguments about “economic sabotage”.

There’s more. When there was an outcry over the award of a foreign labour contract to his brother, Zahid took concrete steps to appease the public by freezing the intake of foreign workers, apparently unconcerned with protests by employer groups. It seemed that Zahid listened to Malaysia’s unemployed youths, who said it was only poor employment terms that was preventing them from taking the menial jobs foreigners were hired for.

Sure, there was a somewhat salty tone to the whole thing, but despite the short-term effect on the employers, Zahid made the right decision. Employers who are used to cheap, disposable, and in some cases abusable labour will now have to deal with the youth of Malaysia. This will have the knock-on effect of improving the working conditions surrounding hard labour jobs.

It does look like nothing less than a rebranding exercise for our DPM is being carried out to establish him as an even handed man of the people. It is hard to say if the result will be as Zahid hopes, but carrying out the exercise is itself a step in the right direction.

Nonetheless, the timing of Zahid’s adjustment of his public persona is curious indeed. The Sarawak state election is over, and the focus will now shift to the 14th general election, which some expect to be held next year. Zahid’s positioning of himself as far more prime ministerial than we thought should be something to watch. After all, the outcome of GE14 will directly affect the Umno elections that will come afterwards.

There are still plenty of rough edges on Zahid, but if this is his gambit to put himself properly in the conversation about who the next prime minister will be, he’s probably heading in the right direction.

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