PAS has refuted rumours, prompted by a news report, that there were discrepancies to be found in the votes count for its vice-presidency contest during last weekend's Muktamar.

Upholding that its three elected vice-presidents have been surely voted in, PAS election commission head Asmuni Awi said he was dumbfounded by a New Straits Times (NST) article claiming otherwise.

NONE The NST article, in its own tally of the vote counts, alleged that the party had miscalculated votes in the five-way fight for the three VP posts, which was ultimately won by Salahuddin Ayub, Tuan Ibrahim Tuan Man and Husam Musa.

A fourth placed candidate, Mahfuz Omar, narrowly lost to Husam Musa by just 16 votes .

"Firstly, I am puzzled how the papers came up with their voting figures, it wasn't from us," Asmuni told Malaysiakini.

"And secondly, none of the VP candidates have made any complaints and they have also approved the voting process."

NST

, however, had claimed that the figures just didn't match up. In a report titled " Hadi brushes aside vote discrepancy in VP race " on November 25, NST questioned why some 86 votes were unaccounted for.

"Perhaps they don't understand the voting process," Asmuni said.

He explained that delegates who were eligible to vote were given a booklet during PAS Muktamar, held in Petaling Jaya. They then detached the relevant voting ballot.

All five VP candidates names were on a single ballot and they were only required to cross and pick three candidates for VP.

Asmuni said 1,086 ballots were counted and out of this, six were spoilt votes - either because there were no marks made or more than three marks were made.

When asked why there weren't 3,240 votes in the final count as expected, but instead 3,154 votes in the final count, Asmuni explained that there may have been some "fanatic" voters who only backed one single choice for VP and didn't want to give votes to any of the others.

These were also counted as valid.