In the bad ol' days, it was a standing joke that for all his omniscience, even God didn't know when the Malaysian Parliament would be dissolved. That was solely Mahathir's big secret.

The (former) prime minister had long treated the dissolution of Parliament as his personal franchise: the date would be announced when He personally deemed it time that we know. Dismissive of the opposition, He toyed with the voting public like a smug and superior cat with its prey, tossing a few hints here and a few red herrings there - all of which the Cronesian media dutifully lapped up and regurgitated as front page, albeit speculative, news.

If going to the polls every five years is the single major signifier of democracy, can we infer that the Old Man's cavalier attitude towards announcing that date mirrored his contempt for the entire electoral process? After all, the result would have been all too predictable. What other outcome could there be other than the BN retaining its two-thirds majority, and business as usual?

In this matter at least, the sitting prime minister Abdullah Badawi has not followed in the tradition of his predecessor. He spared us the cat-and-mouse guessing game and made the announcement with a gravity befitting his office.