PUTRAJAYA, 10 Apr: The Election Commission (EC) announced that the 13th General Election (GE-13) will be held on 5 May 2013, while the nomination of candidates will be held on 20 April 2013.
The day of hope much anticipated by all Malaysians was announced by the EC Chairman, Tan Sri Abdul Aziz Mohd Yusof, at a press conference at the EC Media Centre in Putrajaya.
The choice of the date was finalised after the EC held a special morning meeting seeing that the dissolution of Parliament has been officially announced by Prime Minister Datuj Seri Najib Razak on April 3.
Prior to that, the Negeri Sembilan Legislative Assembly became the first state in the history of Malaysia to automatically dissolve after the term of the administrative mandate ended on 27 March.
On the whole, almost all states will be involved in the Parliament and State Legislative Assembly election level except for Sarawak, which will only be fighting for Parliamentary seats.
A total of 222 Parliamentary seats and 505 State Legislative Assembly seats will be contested, witnessing two great political powers in Malaysia, Pakatan Rakyat (PR) and Barisan Nasional (BN), battle to form the Federal and State Government.
During the GE-12, PR denied the 2/3 majority win of Parliamentary seats, altogether witnessing BN form the government with a simple majority.
More surprisingly is when PR managed to capture four states, Selangor, Kedah, Penang and Perak, while maintaining victory in Kelantan.
However, Perak managed to be controlled again by Umno-BN in February 2009 after four PR Assemblyman (three PKR and one DAP) declared that they were leaving the party and supporting BN after ruling for almost 11 months.