GE13: What comes after dissolution?
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak has called for the elections, after the King consented to the dissolution of Parliament. What’s next?
Razak Ahmad, The Star
The wait for the dissolution of Parliament is finally over and now, a chain of events will take place within the next 60 days under a fixed timetable that will culminate in polling day at the 13th general election.
According to Article 55(4) of the Federal Constitution, whenever Parliament is dissolved, a general election will be held within 60 days of and Parliament shall be summoned to meet on a date not later than 120 days from that date.
The first step that will now take place following the announcement of the dissolution of Parliament is for the Speaker of Parliament to notify the Election Commission (EC) that a dissolution has occurred and to request that general elections be held.
Similar notices will also be submitted by the respective state legislative assembly Speakers to the Commission to inform the EC of the dissolution of the respective legislatures.
The EC will then announce the date that it will hold a meeting to decide and announce the dates for both parliamentary and state elections.
The dates are for nomination; advance voting for military and police personnel and their spouses; postal balloting both locally for qualified voters such as certain personnel and EC workers as well as Malaysians abroad; followed by polling day for the rest of the country’s 13.3 million voters.
With the Dewan Rakyat dissolved Wednesday, a 60-day time limit to polling day would mean that the last date upon which voting must be done is approximately on June 3.
EC chairman Tan Sri Abdul Aziz Mohd Yusof had, however, said earlier that the EC would try to hold parliamentary and state polls simultaenously.
This, he added, would mean that he would try as best as possible to ensure that polling takes place by May 28 which is within the 60-day period following the dissolution of the Negri Sembilan legislative assembly on March 28.
Apart from the 60-day limit, the fixing of dates for nomination and polling is also governed under the Elections (Conduct of Elections) Regulations, 1981.
According to the Regulation, the date of nomination must be no less than four days after a notice of dissolution of Parliament of State Assembly is issued.
The date for advance voting, meanwhile, must be no less than seven days after nomination, while polling day must be no earlier than three days after the date of advance voting.
The whole process from nomination to polling requires 10 days and the EC has said that it would set a campaign period of no shorter than 11 days for the upcoming election.
At the last general election in 2008, the EC held a meeting two days following the dissolution of Parliament on Feb 13 that year and fixed March 8 for polling, giving a period of 25 days between dissolution and polling.
