Embattled Zahid turns language into a political issue

Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi has lashed out irrelevantly and unfairly at Malaysians who can’t speak Bahasa Malaysia (BM). All because he appears a sore loser for getting criticised widely for his poor English delivery when addressing the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York last month.

In so doing, Zahid has unnecessarily taken a divisive and dangerous tack.

He should instead have been gracious in accepting the criticisms. That would have been statesman-like. As the second highest official of the land, he was, after all, expected to give a good showing because he was representing the country, but he faltered.

Zahid was obviously nervous when he gave his speech. He sounded like a fish out of water, mispronouncing words (“blue ocean” came out “blue osen”), adding an ‘s’ to the end of singular nouns, thus making them sound wrongly plural, and even referring to Najib as the country’s “president”!

Jokes about his performance went viral. One that had me ROTF (Rolling On The Floor, where laughing is implied) went: “After hearing his speech, it was so obvious that Zahid Hamidi is MEXICAN!”

Malaysians criticised because they felt embarrassed that someone no less than our deputy prime minister let us down on an international stage. If it had been someone else, probably no one would have cared.

Zahid should have acknowledged that and admitted that yes, his English was not good and that he would make a pledge to improve it. He would have won tremendous respect for it.

Instead, he patted himself on the back when he addressed an Umno division last Sunday. He did admit that “maybe I did not pronounce one or two words correctly” but he was, above all, proud that someone like him, who was not educated in any famous school but in Sekolah Menengah Agama Izuddin Shah, could address the UN. (One could of course find fault with that kind of reasoning because it sounds like an excuse. Your background doesn’t acquit you if you can’t do the job well.)

He also said he was not bothered or disheartened by the criticisms he got for his UNGA speech. Really?

All right, if Zahid wasn’t bothered or disheartened, then he should have let it be. But he proceeded to lash out at others who have no relation whatsoever to his UNGA performance - Malaysians who can’t speak Bahasa Malaysia well. Why?

Is his English bad because there are Malaysians whose BM is bad? No.

Did they contribute in any way towards making him pronounce English words incorrectly? No.

Does criticising these people in any way absolve him of his incompetent performance at UNGA? An emphatic no...