It appears that the tide is still turned against Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah as he has yet to begin securing nominations to contest for the post of Umno president in the party's September polls.

With 64 divisions already having held their meetings, the Umno supreme council member has still not been nominated for any post in the party including for a supreme council seat.

The Bukit Bintang and Ranau (Sabah) divisions which met last night nominated Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and Najib Abdul Razak for president and deputy president respectively.

With those nominations, Abdullah, the acting Umno president, has to date garnered 64 nominations, while Najib has secured a similar number for the post of deputy president.

For the party's three vice-president posts, Bukit Bintang nominated the incumbent Muhyiddin Yassin, Malacca Chief Minister Mohd Ali Rustam and Federal Terrirtory Minister Mohd Isa Abdul Samad

Ranau, meanwhile, nominated Muhyiddin and Mohd Ali for vice-presidents together with Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Mustapa Mohamed.

With these nominations, incumbent Muhyiddin leads the VP race with 58 nominations followed by Mohd Ali with 41 nominations. Another incumbent, Muhammad Muhd Taib, is in third place with 35 nominations.

Mustapa, who is Umno Kelantan chairman, has succeeded in surpassing the 20 nominations required to qualify to contest the vice-presidency. Mohd Isa, who has currently secured 15 nominations, still needs another five to qualify.

Hisham/Khairy lead

For the Umno supreme council, 35 candidates have qualified to vie for seats. Leading the pack are Selangor Menteri Besar Dr Mohd Khir Toyo and Information Minister Abdul Kadir Sheikh Fadzir with 46 nominations each.

Six other candidates who secured more than 40 nominations each are Abdul Aziz Shamsudin (44), Tajol Rosli Ghazali (44), Ahmad Zahid Hamidi (43), Mohd Shafie Apdal (43), Syed Razak Syed Zain (42), Khaled Nordin (41), Shafie Salleh (41) and Musa Aman (41).

Over at Umno Youth, the Keningau and Batu Sapi divisions, which also met last night, have nominated Hishammuddin Hussein and Khairy Jamaluddin for Youth head and deputy head respectively.

With those nominations, Hishammuddin now has a total of 135 nominations for the post while Khairy has 125 nominations to contest the deputy head's post.

Also last night, Puteri Umno Putrajaya nominated Noraini Ahmad and Azalinda Mohd Rashad to contest the positions of Puteri head and deputy head respectively.

The post of Puteri divisional head for Putrajaya was won uncontested by Hamizah Abdollah Zawawi with Sry Widiana Khairudin being retained as her deputy.

The Umno Youth and Umno Women's Wing divisional meetings for Putrajaya will be held tonight, followed by the delegates meeting for the division.

Aside from Putrajaya, the divisions of Tenom and Batu Sapi, both in Sabah, and Pendang in Kedah are also scheduled to hold their meetings today.