The full results of the campus election in Universiti Malaya have been withheld pending a fresh polling for the education faculty next Monday after irregularities were found in yesterday's polls.

A source told malaysiakini that the university's election committee had found students from the distance-learning programme in the faculty casting their votes, too.

Under the rules, only registered full-time undergraduates are allowed to participate in the campus electoral process, rendering post-graduate and distance-learning students ineligible.

Following the discovery of the breach, the election committee is withholding the results for the seven general constituency seats until polling in the education faculty ends Monday.

The results for the rest of the faculty constituencies, however, have been announced, with the 'anti-establishment' group dominating with 27 seats and leaving the 'pro-establishment' group lagging with only three seats.

Efforts to contact the UM student affairs department for comment were unsuccessful.

Majority win reduced

Meanwhile, the nationwide campus elections yesterday also saw the 'anti-establishment' students losing some foothold in several major universities.

While they managed to retain their dominance in Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) and Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), they were defeated in Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM).

In USM, the 'anti-establishment' students took all six general constituency seats contested at its Penang main campus. They also took 14 out of the 25 faculty seats.

In UKM, the group won eight out of the nine general constituency seats contested, and 15 out of 24 faculty seats.

Though the group in UPM won 13 out of the 15 general constituencies and 21 out of 30 faculty seats, it was a reduced majority from last year's 36-seat win out of 39.

In UTM, the pro-establishment group won 10 general constituency seats out of 15, leaving the 'anti-establishment' group with four, and a separate group calling themselves progressive, one.

At faculty level, the score was 16 seats, seven and five, respectively. Two seats were uncontested.

The 'anti-establishment' group blamed their defeat on alleged tampering of ballot boxes. They claimed to have spotted three people behaving suspiciously in the hall where the ballot boxes were kept prior to the vote-counting.

They said the university authority delayed investigating the matter when it was reported to them.

Furthermore, suspected irregularities could not be traced as ballot papers this year have no serial numbers.