KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia's Prime Minister Najib Razak has asked members of the ruling party and his supporters to be prepared for polls, in one of the strongest signs yet from the leader that he may call early elections.
Najib, whose tenure ends by the second half of next year, is seeking a fresh mandate to rule as he faces an internal revolt led by his former mentor.
"I want to ask you all, are we strong enough? Are we ready? Can we dissolve Parliament tomorrow?" he said to cheers from a capacity crowd at the 87,000-seater stadium in Kuala Lumpur, where his party, the United Malay National Organization (UMNO), celebrated its 71st anniversary.
"That is the spirit that we want," he said.
Tens of thousands of party members clad in red, the party color, filled the stadium grandstand, cheering and singing along to party songs for several hours as they waited for Najib to turn up to deliver his keynote address.
Thursday's anniversary celebration was arguably one of the largest since Najib took over as prime minister in 2009.
"All of you are have gathered here, as a symbol that our party is the strongest party on Malaysian soil," Najib said.
The next election is not due until 2018 but Najib is expected to capitalize on opposition disarray and call one this year.
Government sources have told Reuters that Najib may call polls in the third quarter.
Although Najib is widely expected to win, he has little room for manoeuvre. The UMNO-led Barisan Nasional (BN) won narrowly in the 2013 elections and if his majority was further eroded, Najib could face an internal leadership challenge.
Najib's former mentor turned critic Mahathir Mohamad is now leading an opposition party campaign to oust him.
Malaysian PM hints at early polls
Malaysian PM hints at early polls
NASA’s new moon rocket heads to the pad ahead of astronaut launch as early as February
- The 98-meter rocket began its 1.6 kph creep from Kennedy Space Center’s Vehicle Assembly Building at daybreak
- The six-kilometer trek could take until nightfall
CAPE CANAVERAL, USA: NASA’s giant new moon rocket headed to the launch pad Saturday in preparation for astronauts’ first lunar fly-around in more than half a century.
The out-and-back trip could blast off as early as February.
The 322-foot (98-meter) rocket began its 1 mph (1.6 kph) creep from Kennedy Space Center’s Vehicle Assembly Building at daybreak. The four-mile (six-kilometer) trek could take until nightfall.
Thousands of space center workers and their families gathered in the predawn chill to witness the long-awaited event, delayed for years. They huddled together ahead of the Space Launch System rocket’s exit from the building, built in the 1960s to accommodate the Saturn V rockets that sent 24 astronauts to the moon during the Apollo program. The cheering crowd was led by NASA’s new administrator Jared Isaacman and all four astronauts assigned to the mission.
Weighing in at 11 million pounds (5 million kilograms), the Space Launch System rocket and Orion crew capsule on top made the move aboard a massive transporter that was used during the Apollo and shuttle eras. It was upgraded for the SLS rocket’s extra heft.
The first and only other SLS launch — which sent an empty Orion capsule into orbit around the moon — took place back in November 2022.
“This one feels a lot different, putting crew on the rocket and taking the crew around the moon,” NASA’s John Honeycutt said on the eve of the rocket’s rollout.
Heat shield damage and other capsule problems during the initial test flight required extensive analyzes and tests, pushing back this first crew moonshot until now. The astronauts won’t orbit the moon or even land on it. That giant leap will take come on the third flight in the Artemis lineup a few years from now.
Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover and Christina Koch — longtime NASA astronauts with spaceflight experience — will be joined on the 10-day mission by Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, a former fighter pilot awaiting his first rocket ride.
They will be the first people to fly to the moon since Apollo 17’s Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt closed out the triumphant lunar-landing program in 1972. Twelve astronauts strolled the lunar surface, beginning with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in 1969.
NASA is waiting to conduct a fueling test of the SLS rocket on the pad in early February before confirming a launch date. Depending on how the demo goes, “that will ultimately lay out our path toward launch,” launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson said on Friday.
The space agency has only five days to launch in the first half of February before bumping into March.
