Is March 26 the Dissolution Date?

Word has it that sometime this week or the next, Prime Minister Najib Razak will announce the dissolution of Parliament to pave the way for the 13^th general election to be held probably in mid-April. He is meeting with the King this Wednesday, and on the agenda could be his seeking the latter’s approval to dissolve the House.

If I were a gambling man, I would place a bet on March 26 as being the date of dissolution, but then again, with Najib having shown himself to be an indecisive prime minister, one never knows.

He has been delaying calling the general election for so long that he could still stall it further. But on the other hand, he has in the past week given out bountiful goodies to a large segment of the electorate, i.e. the police, the army and the 1.4-million strong civil service, which could deliver bountiful votes from the grateful recipients to his Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition. And he has since followed that with granting an extra month’s bonus to Permodalan Nasional Berhad (PNB) employees.

Furthermore, the Lahad Datu crisis seems to have given his government a boost, with a good number of Malaysians rallying behind it in the face of the common Sulu enemy. Notice also that he, his deputy Muhyiddin Yassin and even ex-prime minister Mahathir Mohamad have been visibly giving their support to the security forces by visiting them at their temporary camp whereas the Opposition Pakatan Rakyat leaders have not made a showing.

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