Nurul Izzah and Tengku Zafrul: The next PM and DPM of Malaysia?
3 Jun 2025 • 1:00 PM MYT
TheRealNehruism
Writer. Seeker. Teacher
Image credit: MCOBA / Nurul Izzah FBA day after Rafizi and Nik Nazmi announced their resignation from cabinet, Tengku Zafrul announced that he has joined PKR.
Azmi Hassan of Akademi Nusantara has already poured cold water on the move by saying Tengku Zafrul move is bound to flop, in the sense that Azmi believes that Tengku Zafrul is bound to do as badly in PKR as he has done in Umno, but I beg to differ.
I think Tengku Zafrul will do great in PKR. He will do so great that if I were a betting man, I bet that if Nurul Izzah becomes the next PM of the country, Tengku Zafrul might likely be her Deputy Prime Minister.
The problem with Tengku Zafrul in Umno is that Umno is an identity-based party rather than a performance-based party, and Tengku Zafrul is basically hopeless in the subject of identity-based politics.
To play identity politics, you have to do things like be seen drinking Teh Tarik at a warung, attending weddings and funerals in your constituency, parade around with a bag of rice in relief centres in times of flood, talk about race and religion, help your supporters by giving them things like a surat sokongan and petrol money, and litter your speeches with quotes from the scripture.
If you do things like this, your constituents will think that you are one of them, and they will then vote for you, because they will feel that if you win, it is akin to them winning too.
Tengku Zafrul however, is more of a performance-based politician than he is an identity based one.
His forte is in finding ways to make win-win deals with corporations or other countries, so as to increase our opportunity to win, grow, progress and become more prosperous.
In Umno, it is inevitable that someone like him will be underappreciated, and perhaps even denigrated, for not “earning” the right to become a minister, as per Umno’s value system, simply because he doesn’t play the identity game that all other Umno politicians play.
As a category of politician, Tengku Zafrul is probably more of a “technocrat”, similar to Rafizi or Anthony Loke, than he is to the likes of Hadi, Muhyiddin or Anwar, who are chiefly identity based politicians.
Even compared to Rafizi and Anthony Loke, Tengku Zafrul is much more of a “technocrat”, because even Anthony Loke and Rafizi play the identity game to an extent, but Tengku Zafrul is almost exclusively playing the performance game.
A big part of the reason why Tengku Zafrul is probably the only politician who has managed to stay on as a minister from Muhyiddin’s time to Ismail Sabri’s time to Anwar’s time, is precisely because everybody at the top needs a technocrat.
You can rise to the top by playing identity politics – or by making everybody believe that you are one of them and you are for them – but to stay on top, you will have to provide the people with victories, growth, progress and prosperity.
People like Ismail Sabri, Anwar and Muhyiddin might be able to rise to the top by making their party members or the general public believe that they are one of them and that a victory for them is equal to the victory for the public or the party, but once they are at the top, the public and the voters will only remain identified with them, if they are able to generate victories, growth, progress and prosperity.
This is where people like Tengku Zafrul come in.
Identity politics might be a mind game but victory, growth, progress and prosperity are matters related to reality . It doesn’t matter how many people in this world believe in you, for as long as you don’t create the conditions in reality that will allow you to win, grow, progress and prosper, you are not going to be able to win, grow, progress and prosper.
To enable the condition for you to win, grow, progress and prosper, you actually have to focus on reality, not on changing the heart and mind of people.
In other words, you have to crunch the numbers, and study how much resources, manpower, time, space, opportunity and advantage you have, and come up with a plan to optimise what you have, so that you can come up with a plan where you can win, grow, progress and prosper.
Other than the fact that Tengku Zafrul is someone that someone at the top like Anwar can count on to focus on reality, crunch the numbers and enable the condition to generate the growth, progress and prosperity that not only the country needs, but he himself needs to stay in power, Tengku Zafrul also has the additional benefit of being someone that will likely never challenge someone at at the top, simply because he has no interest or know how in playing the identity game in politics.
The problem with Rafizi, although he was seen to be a technocrat, just like Tengku Zafrul, is that not only was he not a very successful technocrat, who could be counted to be bring such things as the PADU system to fruition, he also posed a threat to Anwar, in that he clearly has ambitions to be the number 1, as well as the ability to play the identity game that might allow him to overtake Anwar as PKR’s number 1.
With Rafizi’s departure, Tengku Zafrul is the perfect replacement that Anwar requires, because Tengku Zafrul is likely not only a better technocrat than Rafizi, he is most likely never going to challenge Anwar, or Nurul Izzah, for the top position.
I actually see the Tengku Zafrul and Nurul Izzah combo in somewhat the same light as the Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh combo of India.
Manmohan Singh was also a technocrat, who set the foundations for India’s transformation from a bureaucratic laden and inefficient economy that it was in the past, to become one of the economic powerhouses of modern times.
Despite that, he never once did try to usurp the position of Sonia Gandhi, as the leader of the Congress party of India and the defacto leader of India at the time.
Currently, our two DPM’s, be it Fadhillah and Zahid Hamidi, are simply our DPM’s because of a political compromise.
In the next general election however, if PH is able to win in a much stronger position, and thus no longer requires to give out the DPM position to other parties, as a political compromise, it might come to pass that the DPM position will go to someone like Tengku Zafrul, who can be counted to use their position to generate results, but not use it as a platform to topple the number 1.
For all you know, even if it comes to pass that for whatever reason, Nurul Izzah cannot replace Anwar as the number 1, like Manmohan Singh, Tengku Zafrul might be the best person, both for Anwar’s family and the country, that stand in as the number 1.
Not only will their technocratic nature help the country forward, their lack of capability to play identity based politics will be able to reassure Anwar’s family that power will still be securely in their hand, even if they are not the ones in the number 1 position.
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kt comments:
Methinks Sathia matey thinks TOO highly of TZA, wakakaka
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