Will there be a General Election within the next six months?

Subramaniam Bharathy

Najib is in the throes of an imminent political death. He is grasping for his last political breaths. He is desperate. When you are desperate, all discretion goes out the window and risk considerations do not seem to matter. When survival is all that counts – what are you talking about making a successful country, father’s image or not?

Najib is very much trying to live up to his father’s image. He wants to leave behind a successful country. Unfortunately, he does not have all the skills needed to do that. Just look at the mish mash across the country. He does not seem to be able to get his arms around any of these. The issues, however seem to be only growing.

Perkasa, Mahaithr, MCA, MIC, PKFZ, Tajudin Ramli, Helmi Saad, Rahman Maidin, Muhyiddin Yassin, Hishamuddin, KJ, Sarawak, Taib Mahmud, Sabah BN, – just to name a few around him. If you add his nemesis in PKR, in PAS, in Mongolia, in France, in Hindraf, what you get is not a very pretty picture of a PM in control of his and his party’s future.

With so much uncertainty, only a fool will decide to go to the polls.
Is Najib such a fool?

Najib may not be skilfull, may not be a risk taker, but nobody can accuse him of being a fool. If Najib decides he has to go to the polls in the next six months, what it may mean is that there are worse consequences out there beyond all of this if he does not.

It is a well known fact that the government is fast runinng out of the kind of funds it has been used to in its heydays – the kind of funds needed to keep UMNO humming along. The talk of the need to to withdraw subsidies, the need to introduce GST are all indicators of these mounting pressures. All the FELDA, FELCRA exposures sure do not help any of that. The by-election expenditures which are by no means insignificant do not help either. The sources of funding for the political patronage system that UMNO has built up is drying up.

Najib has to act fast. The costs and risks of calling the elections soon seem to be less than the costs and risks of not calling the elections soon enough.

Najib is in the throes of an imminent political death. He is grasping for his last political breaths. He is desperate. When you are desperate, all discretion goes out the window and risk considerations do not seem to matter. When survival is all that counts – what are you talking about making a successful country, father’s image or not?

So, there you have it – the making of the 13th GE sooner than at the end of Najib's term.