Election Commission chairperson Abdul Rashid Abdul Rahman today defended his decision to hire Puteri Umno members as part-time election workers and claimed that it was done without any hidden agenda.

Abdul Rashid told malaysiakini that he made the decision after receiving a request from Puteri Umno chief Azalina Othman Said early this year to take on board several "jobless women" to fill the temporary posts available in the commission.

"We are not helping them because they are from Umno ... but to help the (unemployed) women. If 'Puteri PAS' come to us with similar requests, we would have reacted the same way," he said when contacted.

Last week, leaders from opposition party PAS provided proof in Parliament of the commission's plan to recruit members from the ruling party's young women's wing as election workers.

They questioned the credibility of Abdul Rashid as the commission's chief whom they accused of favouring Umno and therefore unfit to continue as an independent EC chief.

'Leaked' documents

They backed their allegations with two 'leaked' letters - one written by a top EC official while the other by Azalina ( left ) - suggesting that there was a conspiracy between Umno and the commission.

Clarifying his decision, Abdul Rashid said Azalina and her team approached him early this year, and had among others, talked about Puteri Umno's special bureau, which was established to help unemployed members from the party.

"They (Puteri Umno) said there are many of them (jobless women) ... hundreds of them, and they needed my help to find these unemployed women jobs. They were informed that EC is one of the bodies that offers part-time jobs," he said.

He denied that the hiring of the part-time workers was connected to the coming general election, stating that the posts offered were to last only for a few months and mostly involved clerical work such as "helping voters to fill forms".

Abdul Rashid said he agreed to help Azalina because he felt Puteri Umno's job-finding efforts for their members was noble.

The plan has since been aborted after the scandal broke in June.

'She did it'

In defending his action, Abdul Rashid said he had given specific instructions that the intake should not be done under any political party's name.

He said that the May 6 letter - titled 'Temporary administrative assistants from Puteri Umno - written by the commission deputy secretary Patimah Mohd Yusof to state officers was a "mistake".

In the letter, Patimah said an earlier letter relating to the Puteri Umno recruitment decision " mestilah dimasukkan dalam fail simpanan pegawai Pilahanraya Negeri sahaja dan bukan dalam fail terbuka " (is to be kept in the commission's officers private files instead of the open file).

The EC chief argued that there was nothing unusual to this "directive" as all communications among officials are considered confidential.

"The document is confidential. Maybe it does not have a confidential stamp on it, but it is nevertheless classified," he said.

"It is her (Patimah's) mistake. When I specifically said that the intake should not be done under any political party's name, she somehow mistakenly wrote the heading of the letter in such a manner. Maybe she doesn't know that it is wrong to take staff from a political party. I don't know how she could have made the mistake, but she did it," he added.

Whistleblower identified

Meanwhile, Rashid said the commission secretary Wan Ahmad Nor will lodge a police report on the leakage of the 'secret' documents by his staff.

"I believe that he is going to do it this afternoon. We talked about it (the leakage) and he (Wan Ahmad) said he knows who the culprit is. But we are not going to take any action as we prefer to leave it to the police."

He also expressed his regret that PAS had decided to politicise the issue stating that such an expose brought no benefit to the public.

PAS, in its 49th Muktamar (general assembly) last weekend, had passed a resolution demanding the resignations of Rashid and Wan Ahmad, stating that the two had wilfully allowed the commission to be abused by Umno.