The most probable date for the long-awaited dissolution of the 12th Parliament is Monday, March 25 although it could be earlier in the next ten days or even later.
The automatic dissolution of the Negri Sembilan State Assembly on midnight on 26th March 2013 should under ordinary circumstances be the last cut-off date for the dissolution of Parliament, but these are not ordinary times, and Parliament can be dissolved earlier in the next 10 days or even later, exhausting another 32 days to lead up to the unprecedented automatic dissolution of Parliament on midnight April 27, 2013.
It is precisely because these are not ordinary times that Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak has put the country for nearly four long years on an election mode ever since he became the sixth Prime Minister on April 3, 2009, spending more time campaigning to get an elected mandate of his own instead of uniting and inspiring Malaysians with an overarching vision and governing the country efficiently and professionally, with integrity and full commitment to democracy, human rights and the environment.
If we are in ordinary times, the 13th general elections would have been held already and Malaysians would have known whether Najib has finally his own mandate to be the Prime Minister of Malaysia or whether Malaysia has got a new Pakatan Rakyat federal government in Putrajaya with a new Prime Minister in the person of Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.
But after the 12th Parliament has exceeded its five-year natural life on March 8, 2013, raising grave questions about the legitimacy of the Najib premiership and Cabinet, the Prime Minister in his “Conversation with the PM” over television on Tuesday could still be pleading for “More time needed to show results before polls” (Bernama).
How long more does Najib really need to enable him to show the success of his four-year National Transformation Programme when recent weeks have furiously produced one example after another of the abject failures of his alleged “transformation” agenda.
For instance, the Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said today that it is OK to show the May 13 film “Tanda Putera” behind closed doors – not to the general public but to a certain group only.
In one fell swoop, Muhyiddin has done two things:
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Made an utter mockery of the Cabinet by destroying the integrity and credibility of the Ministers who decided last November that the publicly-funded RM5 million film was “inappropriate” to be screened to the Malaysian public because of its racist, unfactual and unhistorical portrayal of the causes of May 13 riots of 1969; and
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Demolished the legitimacy of Najib’s signature 1Malaysia policy to create a Malaysia where Malaysians regard themselves first as Malaysians and their race, religion, region and socio-economic status second.
It is sad Najib does not seem to realise that he totally lacked credibility and conviction when he said in “Conversation with the PM” that he needs more time to show the success of his national transformation agenda to achieve Vision 2020, as Malaysians are being shown more and more examples of the failures of the Vision 2020, with even former Prime Minister, Tun Mahathir, the “Father of Vision 2020”, coming out openly against the most important Vision 2020 objective of a Bangsa Malaysia!
The seven-hour marathon meeting yesterday between the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak, Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin and the Barisan Nasional Secretary-General Datuk Seri Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor on the one hand and the Barisan Nasional leaders and Barisan Nasional Chief Ministers and Mentris Besar is an indication that it is unlikely that Najib wants to invite further ridicule as the most indecisive PM in the nation’s history who is afraid to face voters by going all the way to automatic dissolution of Parliament on April 27.
Finally, the battle of the century in the 13GE should begin in a matter of days rather than weeks.