The Coalition for Clean and Fair Elections (Bersih) has announced that the Bersih 5 rally will be held in November.

Bersih chairperson Maria Chin Abdullah said the electoral reform group will call a press conference on Sept 14 to announce the date of the rally.

She, however, stopped short of revealing the exact date.

"We will definitely have Bersih 5 in November. I am not going to tell you the date," she said when met at the Palace of Justice in Putrajaya.

Maria also declined to reveal whether they would conduct the rally at Dataran Merdeka again.

Meanwhile, a source told Malaysiakini that Bersih has identified two weekends in November for the rally.

The coalition is waiting for feedback from its 94 endorsing NGOs to decide on the date.

The source close to the Bersih steering committee also revealed that they would be able to finalise the date for the rally latest by Sept 13.

The NGOs will also decide whether the rally will be held in a marathon-style, just like the 34-hour event in August last year.

The rally comes in the wake of the United States Department of Justice’s (DOJ) July 20 lawsuits to seize assets purportedly purchased with stolen 1MDB funds.

The DOJ said that US$731 million was allegedly siphoned from 1MDB and transferred to a bank account owned by 'Malaysian Official 1' (MO1).

Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Abdul Rahman Dahlan had confirmed Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak is MO1, who was mentioned 36 times in DOJ's document.

However, Najib has denied any wrongdoing or that he took public funds for personal gain.

Attorney-general Mohamed Apandi Ali has cleared the prime minister of any wrongdoing.

The last Bersih rally on Aug 29 last year saw a lacklustre turnout among the Malay community, attributed to PAS' decision not to mobilise its members.

Critics used this to attack the rally as being "Chinese" and turned it into a racial issue.

Sungai Besar Umno chief Jamal Md Yunos had announced a second edition of the 'Himpunan Merah' rally simultaneously to counter Bersih 5, saying, he wanted to get 300,000 to take to the streets.

Meanwhile, red shirts leader Mohd Ali Baharom hopes to gather a million individuals clad in “Aku Melayu” (“I am Malay”) T-shirts to protest the Bersih rally.