Will Parliament be dissolved this month for the 13th General Elections next month?
The bet is that the answer will be in the positive, setting the stage for the longest-delayed dissolution of Parliament in the nation’s history by the longest unelected Prime Minister in what is likely to be the dirtiest and most expensive Malaysian general elections!
The Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak, is out on the hustings throughout the country campaigning for his political life, but there is one person in UMNO/Barisan Nasional who is out-campaigning Najib – and he is former and longest-serving Prime Minister, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad.
The 13 General Elections is important and critical for Najib – but it is even more important and critical for Mahathir, as it is not only a referendum on Najib’s four-year “non-transformation” but also on Mahathir’s 22-year authoritarian and corrupt policies.
Actually, for Mahathir, his future is also at stake in the 13GE – as it would determine whether he could continue to be the kingmaker of Umno/BN politics, as now single-handedly calling the shots in UMNO/BN after he successfully forced the retirement of Tun Abdullah as Prime Minister after the “political tsunami” of the 2008 general elections.
Mahathir’s power and influence now writ larger than that of Najib the Prime Minister.
Malaysia has had six Prime Ministers in the past 56 years but no one in UMNO/BN had dared to tell any incumbent Prime Minister that he would have to step down from office if he could not win with a stronger mandate than in the previous polls – as Mahathir has openly done at the 15th Malaysia Strategic Outlook Conference on 31st January where he said that Najib should give way to Deputy Umno president Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin if BN only scores a slim majority in the elections. Najib is under probation and the “principal” who would decide Najib’s future is Mahathir – just as the latter had ended the tenure of the previous Prime Minister, Tun Abdullah, who failed to live up to Mahathir’s expectations!
Almost everyday, Mahathir is not only out-campaigning Najib but laying down policies for Najib and the UMNO/BN Ministers and leaders as in the following samples in the past ten days: