KUALA LUMPUR, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim today said that the country has lost a leader who was very serious in parliamentary reform efforts with the demise of Senate president Senator Datuk Mutang Tagal.

The Prime Minister said that although Mutang had quit politics a long time ago, his determination to elevate the dignity of Parliament, including the Senate, to greater heights could be seen as soon as he was appointed to hold the office of Senate president last February.

‘(As soon as he was appointed) he began holding serious discussions on parliamentary reform with the Dewan Rakyat Speaker (Tan Sri Johari Abdul). I took him as someone who had strong principles and good moral values.

‘We have indeed lost a Senate president who was able to elevate the dignity of the Senate and proposed a reform in our parliamentary system,’ Anwar told reporters when met at the Nirvana Centre here today.

Anwar arrived at the memorial centre at noon to pay his last respects to Mutang who died at the National Heart Institute
(IJN) yesterday.

Source: BERNAMA News Agency