BARISAN Nasional leaders tonight agreed to let a task force lead the coalition in implementing reforms following its devastating performance in GE14.

BN Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin said the task force would see through the reforms after post-mortems by each BN component party. He did not name the members of the task force.

“Tonight’s meeting is about the direction of BN. We have a task force to see through the reforms in BN.

“We don’t know yet who is in the task force,” he said after a BN council meeting tonight at Umno’s headquarters at PWTC in Kuala Lumpur.

BN won only 79 out of 222 parliamentary seats in GE14, its worst performance after six decades of majority rule since independence.

Heads of other component parties said each of them would be conducting post-mortems and focus on becoming a strong parliamentary opposition.

MIC president Dr S. Subramaniam, who lost his Segamat seat, said parties would learn from their electoral performance to become an effective opposition.

“We will make the necessary changes to determine our weaknesses so that the party can move forward,” he said.

MIC won only two parliamentary seats – Tapah and Cameron Highlands – and three state seats.

Chinese component party, MCA, fared even worse, winning only one parliamentary seat, Ayer Hitam.

Its president Liow Tiong Lai lost his Bentong seat after defending it since 1999.

Liow said he would meet other MCA leaders for the party’s post-mortem. – May 14, 2018.