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By JANE RITIKOS, ZULKIFLI ABD RAHMAN and MARTIN CARVALHO
KUALA LUMPUR: Give me more time to deliver what I have promised, said Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.
In asking the people for a fresh mandate, the Prime Minister said his Government was just in the process of implementing almost all the programmes it promised. The programmes would take years to show results, he said.
“These are things that are not easy and take time to accomplish,” he said, adding that the programmes were not only confined to five-year plans in the 9th Malaysia Plan. They included development programmes, vision plans and national economic policies that took as long as 30 years, he said. “We never focused on a five-year plan and later think of others. We have to plan beyond that.
“Some development and vision plans overlap and some need a long time to produce results,” he told reporters after a briefing for 3,000 Umno division members at the Putra World Trade Centre.
On whether Barisan would receive the same overwhelming mandate as in the 2004 election, he said he did not think so. “If I get it, I will be very happy. But I am being very, very practical,” he said, adding that the 2004 result was overwhelming because of the leadership change when he replaced Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
“It was then a time of hope. There was expectation that a lot of things would change, but we cannot change, I cannot change everything. “There was expectation that this or that has to be done. It’s not that we haven’t done anything. I have begun to implement practically everything that I have promised,” he added.
In the briefing, Abdullah touched on current issues such as price increases of consumer goods and petrol, security and poverty eradication efforts as well as party matters.
On a possible election date, he said Parliament could be dissolved “in the near future, much later or a little later.”
