THE chief executive officer of Telekom Malaysia Bhd has been appointed, said Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

“They (TM) have not announced the person yet. And it is someone else (not the acting ceo),” the prime minister said at the Hari Raya open house in Seri Perdana, Putrajaya today.

However, when pressed repeatedly, Dr Mahathir declined to name the person.

Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng also said his ministry did not receive any instructions from Dr Mahathir to replace the chairman or CEO of TM.

TM informed Bursia Malaysia recently that the appointment of the group CEO has been postponed on the request of the Prime Minister’s Office.

In a statement to Bursa Malaysia, TM said chairman Rosli Man had also informed the board of directors of the request in early March.

“We believe that it is good corporate governance to engage key stakeholders, including the PMO,” it said in response to an article titled Telekom CEO Stand-Off in The Edge Financial Daily.

The report quoted sources as saying that Rosli had refused to proceed with the appointment of acting-CEO Imri Mokhtar as its CEO, despite TM’s special shareholder, the Minister of Finance Inc, having approved Imri’s appointment.

TM referred to the paragraph in the report that said : “Sources told The Edge Financial Daily that TM’s statement on Wednesday, when it said that the appointment of its CEO has to go through due process with MoF and its board of directors, was not accurate.”

The telco reaffirmed the information given in its earlier statement last week.

Imri has been acting-CEO ever since Bazlan Osman had resigned on November 16.

Bazlan had taken over the position from Shazalli Ramly a month after the May 9 general election.

Shazalli was also media adviser to former prime minister Najib Razak.

Since then, TM has not had a CEO for about a year after Barisan Nasional’s defeat in GE14.

Rosli was CEO of Celcom Bhd, when the company was owned by Tajuddin Ramli in the 1990s. He became TM chairman after Sulaiman Mahbob resigned in November. – June 5, 2019.