In a fluster over polls date

cene: Restoran Raju, PJ

Chong: So when is the general election Azman?

Azman: Why ask me?

Chong: Well, you are a journalist. Aren’t journalists suppose to know everything?

Azman: Goodness, what makes you say that?

Chong: What?! You mean we have been wrong all this while in assuming that?

Azman: Of course. How can we know everything?

Chong: But journalists write with such confidence, giving that impression. Don’t you think so, Cikgu?

Zain: Of one thing I’m certain – many of them know much more than us. But you mustn’t envy them. They know more because it is their business to be extra curious and find out things. And because of that, they move among people who know things – ministers and other politicians, government servants, corporate people, those in the military and so on.

Mohan: Including the prime minister.

Zain: Yes. And if they know some important members of his household, his close advisers and close friends, they naturally pick up some useful information. After all, the PM will have to discuss things with someone – who better than family and close associates?

Mohan: In so far as the date of the 13th general election is concerned, he is the man. Under the Westminster system that we inherited from our colonial master, only he can decide that.

Chong: And he won’t tell anyone the date, would he?

Mohan: Of course not. In the last Sarawak state election, the chief minister probably told members of his household and advisers the date, in confidence of course. But once that number of people knew it, it wasn’t long before it became public knowledge. And some journalists knew the date even before the Election Commission met “to decide it”.

Azman: I don’t think Najib will tell that many people once he has decided. And I am not sure he has decided yet.

Chong: But what is keeping him?

Azman: Chong, I notice you are getting impatient with the prime minister for not yet having called for an election.

Zain: Not just him, many others too. Among them are party leaders. So impatient was PAS president Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang that early this month he lashed out at the BN leader for his grip on the date of a general election. He must have been truly angry for he said that “it is only in countries that practise a single-party system, such as the former communist states, that the government sets an election date at the last minute”.

Mohan: But surely he knows that under our parliamentary system there is such a thing as a snap general election, that is when the prime minister calls for the dissolution of parliament part way through a government’s mandate. Or he could go on till the end of the mandate. And this government’s mandate ends only in April next year.

Chong: Which means Najib has until April to call for the 13th general election.

Mohan: Exactly. So I don’t understand why people are hurrying him. A year after he became PM in April 2009, some so-called pundits were already forecasting a date, saying Najib needed his own mandate from the people. And when a year passed with no general election, the next round of guessing began in early 2011 after Sarawak state elections, that it would be December or April this year. After that, June seems the favourite with the pundits.

Azman: It can’t be June now because the second meeting of the Dewan Rakyat this year started yesterday and will end only on the 28th. And the government had only recently said the 2013 budget is going to be good.

Chong: A red herring, no doubt.

Mohan: One Chinese leader told me last week that Najib could call a general election midway through this meeting, and he feels that it is just possible.

Chong: All these guessing games are getting on my nerves, just as they did on Hadi’s. I think it is going to be early next year. But Azman, surely you know members of Najib’s household, his close friends and advisers. You could learn of the date from any of them.

Azman: I don’t think Najib has decided yet. And even if he has, he is not telling anyone, playing it very close to his chest. He wants the advantage of surprising everyone. Who knows – it could help BN win more seats, or even two-thirds of the seats.

Zain: Tun Mahathir Mohamad used the advantage in 1999 and won two-thirds of the seats when everyone said otherwise following the sacking of Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim. But not always – it was a disaster for Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi in 2008.

Chong: I worry about the economy after the general election.

-thesundaily