The Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has left for Uzbekistan for a 4-day official visit. He will only be back on Friday the 21st of November.

The Deputy Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak will leave for Peru on Tuesday, the 18th of November and from there to New York and expected to be back only early December.

Today, Lim Kit Siang held a press conference at the Parliament lobby and asked: who will lead the country in their absence?

He was quoted to have said that it has been at least 30 years since both the top two were not in the country simultaneously.

Even the likeliest ones to be Acting PM are or will also be out of the country:
(i) Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin will be leaving together with Najib.
(ii) Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Albar, ditto.
(iii) Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz (PM’s Dept) is in Abdullah’s entourage.
(iv) Senator Tan Sri Amirsham Abdul Aziz (PM’s Dept), ditto.
(v) Datuk Shafie Apdal (Unity, Culture, Arts and Heritage), ditto.
(vi) Datuk Seri Mohamed Khaled Nordin (Higher Education), ditto.

Then Lim asked the tantalizing question:

Can it be the most senior minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Tan Sri Bernard Dompok or the newly elected MCA president, Datuk Seri Ong Tee Keat?

Note: someone commented that there were two other occasions in the last 3 years when they were both out of the country at the same time. Still, have so many top-ranking officials been out of the country at the same time that it’s unclear who’s in charge?

Source
The Star, 17th November 2008

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