SHAH ALAM – The guessing game on the date of the upcoming General Election 15 (GE15) starts.
It is not only because July 31 will mark the end of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the government of Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob and Pakatan Harapan (PH), but the Prime Minister also received pressure from some Umno leaders themselves.
On Friday, it marked four years since the GE14 formal mandate was recorded and now there are only 364 days left before the current mandate closes its curtain and make way for GE15 to be held.
The question now is, when would be the significant date of GE15? Some experts said that this year would be the best time for GE15, especially for Umno and Barisan Nasional (BN), but some of them felt Ismail Sabri should spend the remaining 364 days.
YEAR-END FORECAST
Nusantara Academy for Strategic Research Senior Fellow Professor Madya Dr Azmi Hassan believed that the four years term was enough for the current government to dissolve the Parliament to allow GE15 as soon as possible.
He said Malaysia needed a more dominant and stronger government to govern Putrajaya.
Dr Azmi forecasted that GE15 would be held as early as November due to the pressure and urge implied by Umno itself to the Prime Minister so Parliament could be dissolved as soon as possible.
"Ismail Sabri might need to dismiss the Parliament earlier since the Prime Minister’s ‘hands’ now bound with formulating the policy and making important decisions following the party union in Putrajaya,” he said.
Meanwhile, Umno Senior Secretary General Datuk Mustapha Yaakub said the decision to urge the government to dismiss the Parliament in order to give way to GE15 was made a long time ago by the party through Umno General Assembly and Supreme Council Meeting.
However, he stressed that it was quite late for the Prime Minister and the government if they were to dissolve the Parliament after the presentation of Budget 2023 in October.
"For us Umno veterans, it is too late if the Prime Minister wants to dissolve Parliament after the presentation of the Budget because the people are now facing various problems including rising prices of goods and the cost of living.
"The problem has already begun, and we don’t know what more challenges Rakyat will face if the Prime Minister continues to delay the dissolution of Parliament and GE15.
"Ideally, after BN achieved outstanding success in Melaka and Johor prior to this, Pak Long Mail (Prime Minister) should have called to dissolve the Parliament,” he said.
However, Mustapha said, the government also could not guarantee that other problems would not hit the country if the Prime Minister still wanted to wait until the maturity of the Dewan Rakyat in July 2023 to dissolve Parliament.
"For those who reason that GE15 cannot be held this year because of the issue of the cost of living and inflation, will this problem be solved if GE15 is held in 2023?” he asked.