Council of Elders on a meeting-spree

Right after the announcement to form the new government's Council of Elders last Saturday, its members were off to work right away for their very first meeting.

Then on, several meetings were set up to anticipate the market reaction on Monday, after the change of regime.

Speaking to Malaysiakini, the council's spokesperson A Kadir Jasin shared that they have been preparing for the market to open.

"For the last few days, we have been preparing for the market to open. We are very happy with performance of the market.

"We recognised that our market has been quite strong and it went up by 20 points or 1.09 percent. That should be good. It shows there are no selling off of stocks in Bursa Malaysia.

"You may like to check the performance of the ringgit. It strenghtened a bit and it is good. It shows there is stability in the marketplace," Kadir said.

According to Bernama, Bursa Malaysia encountered a knee-jerk reaction when the market opened yesterday and it saw the market losing almost 50 points at opening.

It rebounded later, mostly on buying support on local funds. The FBM KLCI index gained 3.91 points or 0.21 percent to 1,850.42 yesterday.

After GE14, the ringgit dropped to RM4.00 against the US dollar and weakened to its lowest at RM4.08 last Thursday.

Yesterday, the ringgit recovered and improved to the pre-GE14 level at RM3.95 against US$1.

Time is money, the clock is ticking

Kadir revealed that there will be more meetings arranged for the members of the council in the weeks to come.

"There will be more meetings today, because apart from meeting with these organisations and officials, we are also monitoring day-to-day issues.

"We don't have a long time in 100 days and the people's expectations of the government are so high. We have to be on our toes. Our first day started on May 10," Kadir said.

From time to time, the council plans to hold at least weekly meetings with the press to update its latest progress to the people.

"Let me convince the PM to hold at least weekly meetings with the press. We will see if we achieve something tangible, maybe we will hold one towards the end of the week, probably on Friday, which should be a good day," he said.

On May 11, Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad appointed the Council of Elders comprising eminent persons in the country to advice the government.

The council members are former finance minister Daim Zainuddin, former Bank Negara governor Zeti Akhtar Aziz, former Petronas president Mohd Hassan Merican, tycoon Robert Kuok and economist Jomo Kwame Sundaram. -Mkini