Najib on the horns of a dilemma over polls date

Like coffee left on a backburner, the timing of the general election is a question that has lost flavour.

All of last year, this question enjoyed a sparkle that was grist for the chattering classes, gazing at their crystal balls, to predict when polls would be held.

As 2012 began, the timing question became even more titillating, like the puzzle of an unsolved crime.

But as the clock wound down to when a general election must be held and as event-induced deferrals upset Prime Minister Najib Razak's certainty on when it was propitious to call one, the oomph oozed out of the timing question.

Still, the PM must be persisting in the belief he enjoys room in which to maneuver so that he obtains the most favourable moment to go for it.

Former PM Dr Mahathir Mohamad has advised him to defer the decision till conditions are more conducive for a BN victory.

Mahathir has suggested that the time afforded Najib through deferral of the polls could profitably be used to win back Chinese support for the BN.

That is like Beijing thinking that they can use the time they have waiting out the Dalai Lama's death to win his followers' acquiescence to the permanence of Chinese suzerainty over Tibet - something that's very unlikely to happen.

It is difficult to see how conditions in the future could be better for Najib than presently obtain for him.

He seems, in terms of ability to fix on a suitable moment for the polls, caught between a rock and a hard place.

April polls last year

In the year past, factors that appeared vaguely threatening to the PM's prospects of turning up an ace where the timing of the polls is concerned, have now become decidedly ominous for his well-being.

If there is one comment that has acquired the aura of the endlessly quotable for former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson, it was his musing that "a week is a long time in politics."

To Najib, a few months must now seem an eternity, given that he may have wanted to go for a general election as early as April last year when Sarawak Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud was obliged to hold a state poll.

At that time Najib must have felt he enjoyed room enough for maneuver to allow BN's Taib to go ahead to the polls while he could hold back and view the election in Sarawak as a gauge by which to determine what more he needed to do before calling for a general election.

But that space which Najib thought he enjoyed abruptly tightened like a noose and began to chafe at his prospects when polls reform advocacy group Bersih staged its gathering in Kuala Lumpur on July 9 last year.

The Bersih 2.0 demonstration - its remarkable size and its multiracial participation - was a strong signal to Najib that he would have to reckon with the demands of the pressure group or pay the forfeit at the polls.

He chose to reckon with it by pledging in September to undertake liberalising measures in pursuit of a goal to make Malaysia the "best democracy".

Those reforms have turned out to be more shimmer than substance, regardless of what US Senator John McCain's said about the PM being an "impressive liberal."

Even as that assurance about wanting the forge the "best democracy" was given by the PM, an ominous thunderhead began to rise on the horizon, in tandem with the outbreak of a fresh scandal concerning a cattle-breeding project.

The French connection

Though the disclosures from the latter scam steadily eroded support for the Najib administration, it was the upcoming matter in France that was the more ominous development.

This concerned the launch of a judicial inquiry into alleged bribery in the country's sale of defence weaponry to Taiwan and Malaysia.

The inquiry held the possibility that the billion ringgit purchase of submarines from the French in the mid-2000s when Najib was defence minister would come in for scrutiny that could threaten a reigning politician's longevity in office.

Because the submarine purchase is suspected to have been tied up with the mysterious death of the Mongolian woman Altantuya Shaariibuu in late 2006 in Malaysia, the French inquiry and what it unearths could only be a matter of foreboding to the former defence minister and current PM.

The mystery-shrouded dispatch of a prominent Malaysian lawyer on a mission of undisclosed gravity when the inquiry began in earnest earlier this year was like the mobile phone conversation, never denied, between Najib and his aide, Abdul Razak Baginda, when the latter was indicted for the murder of Altantuya and had sued for Najib's help.

Both the conversation in which Najib tells Razak Baginda to stay cool as all would be well and the lawyer's mysterious trip reek with an august and tantalising obscurity.

Missed opportunity

Anxiety over the revelations the inquiry would haemorrhage heightened after the inquest's disclosure that a Malaysian naval secret was sold to the French in the bidding prelude to the submarine purchase.

If true, this is the sort of scandal that could bring down democratic governments.

But ours is a simulated rather than substantive democracy and the government, like a moderate swimmer caught in a treacherous undertow, can still survive especially if it is within sight of the shoreline which in this case is the general election.

But the potentially lethal currents of the French inquiry, the country's gloomy economic prospects stemming from continued anemia in the markets in US, Europe and now China, combined with Bersih's yet-to-be reckoned demands augmented by its successful staging of a third demonstration of formidable impact, not to mention the possibility of more scandals being uncorked, all conspire to push the PM out to sea.

To Najib, the time when he could have called a general election in tandem with the Sarawak state poll now looks like an irretrievably lost opportunity.