General Election and Petrol / Toll Prices Hike!

When is the General Election fall into? Will petrol price and toll fare go up next year? Is the rise of crude oil price affecting Tenaga Nasional Bhd operating costs and P&L and subsequently we have to bear the rising costs? These are all the question link together with each other where General Election date is concern.

After so many years of endurance, we all know when general election is coming up, surely there will be a lot of promises being made to public and most of them would not be fulfilled, just to comforting and convincing public to vote for them during the election. Once election over, these promises will be forgotten and things will changed. It is the same happening now. Question has been asked when will the next general election be? Will petrol and toll price rise after general election?

As crude oil price now soaring near to USD 100 per barrel mark, our government cannot sustain its subsidary towards petrol, and this has force the cabinet to rethink and trying to bring forward the election date. Secondly few highways operator has been submitting for approval in increasing the toll fares, but again government need to weight in how much votes they would lose should they approved the application for toll fare increase and also rise in petrol price.

So in order to calm things down, they have no choice, but to push the approval for both cases to after the election is carryout. Therefore they are thinking of bringing forward the election to somewhere before the end of 2007, which I believe is possible. Some expert had analysed that if election is not carryout by end 2007, it would be earliest by April 2008, which by then government would have to pay a lot of "compensation" on petrol and toll company.

So in order to save these millions of ringgit, they are now planning to hold the general election before the end of 2007, so upon succeeding his second term as PM, the government will announce that due to the high soaring of fuel price, we have no choice, but to increase the fuel price to save the government hundreds of millions and same goes to toll fares. If toll fare doesn't rise, government would need to pay the operators up to RM 300 millions per year in compensation.

In view of the above, can we blame the government to increase fuel price and toll fares? Government would have to pay hundreds of millions of ringgit to the respective sectors, which government would rather use for our country's developments. Yes development on what! You and I know most I guess! It's development and improvement of the pocket manufacturing!