Just hours after BN won the 13th general election and beat the opposition Pakatan Rakyat with a simple majority in Parliament, the recommendations to buy stocks came in thick and strong.

A slate of broker and economic research houses tripped over each other to be the first to issue heralds for investors to pile back into the long-underperforming stock market and predictably, the markets jumped by nearly eight percent to a record high in its opening hours of trade on Monday on Bursa Malaysia.

They especially loved political-linked stocks, calling for re-ratings, dusting-offs and relooks at downbeat sectors as if nothing was amiss, just two days after the biggest show of democracy in Malaysia since independence in 1957.

The benchmark FBM KLCI Index which tracks the top stocks on Bursa Malaysia strengthened and the ringgit shot higher against US dollar, both explained away by pent-up demand.
    
And yet so far, the rally remains unconvincing.

Can the Malaysian business community really hope to do ‘business as usual’, ignoring the fact that Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak has not received the mandate he asked for to back his economic programmes, and haunted by widespread accusations of vote-buying and election deception?

Businessmen are voters too. Writing to KiniBiz, entrepreneur Stanley Thai of glovemaker Supermax Corp strongly urged BN to change and adopt some of Pakatan’s manifesto even as CIMB Group’s CEO Nazir Razak (above) publicly congratulated his own brother for winning the election.

After two successive elections of voter swings away from BN, despite its best efforts at fighting corruption (under Abdullah Ahmad Badawi) and making grand economic plans (under Najib)... how many more body blows can BN really take?

Go to KiniBiz for more.