Zahid said he was not jealous of Ismail’s appointment as prime minister last August and speculated that deputy president Mohamad Hasan might be more suitable to be the prime ministerial candidate at the following general election (GE16) five years later.

“If Tok Mat wants (to be prime minister), wait,” Zahid said in an apparent reference to reports speculating about Mohamad as a candidate for prime minister. Zahid said fortune never chanced upon the wrong person. “Maybe Tok Mat’s time will come after GE16,” he said, referring to Mohamad by his popular name.

However, Mohamad said later in the evening that his campaigning for an early general election was not from a desire to be prime minister but his duty as Umno election director.

Zahid said he had not been envious of Ismail, although a vice-president, being nominated to be prime minister last year, and said it was he who proposed Ismail’s name.

He said both he and Najib Razak had accepted that fortune did not shine on them this time.