Some 400 Universiti Teknologi Malaysia students gathered today to deliver a memorandum to university authorities to protest what they claimed to be mishandling of the student council elections which concluded on Monday.

Yesterday, some disgruntled election candidates alleged the Johor-based university's Student Affairs Department lowered the academic requirement for election candidates from 3.0 cumulative points average (CPA) to 2.5 on nomination day without giving prior notice.

The last-minute action is believed to favour some pro-establishment candidates.

Bearing 1,379 signatures collected over the past three days, the memorandum demanded that the university disqualify winners who have less than 3.0 CPA for their academic results.

They also demanded that 'by-elections' be held for the faculties of Geo-Information Engineering and the Management and Human Resources Development as they claimed there were phantom voters present.

The students gathered in front of the university's administrative building with the hope of meeting vice-chancellor Prof Ir Dr Mohd Zulkifli Mohd Ghazali.

However, assistant registrar Wan Mohd Zawawi Wan Abd Rahman met them instead and former student council member, Umar Kharis, representing the students, handed over the memo to him.

The gathering ended peacefully with students dispersing soon after, said a source.

No fist-fights

In a related development, the group seen as 'anti-establishment' won 28 seats in the International Islamic University campus elections which concluded yesterday. The 'pro-establishment' group won six, all uncontested.

IIU is generally considered a hotbed for opposition politics and jailed former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim's supporters.

Today, The Star reported that scores of students engaged in fist-fights outside one of the voting centres yesterday.

However, Ezaruddin Abdul Rahman, a youth leader who was monitoring the campus elections, clarified that he was told there were no punches thrown as reported although there was a commotion.

Asked to comment on this year's campus elections, Ezaruddin, who is also the deputy president of a 'pro-establishment' youth group, Persatuan Pemuda Negara, said the elections went smoothly without much interference from outsiders.

However, he said some students were disappointed that certain quarters labelled them as "pro-government" or "pro-opposition".

"The students told me that they are not anti-government but function as a pressure group," Ezaruddin said.

Some students said this year's elections was less exciting due to the absence of election pacts, though they also conceded that it would give candidates more prominence instead of the 'groups', he added.

With the conclusion of the campus elections in IIU yesterday, the 'anti-establishment' group controlled the student councils of six of the more established public universities such as Universiti Sains Malaysia, Universiti Malaya, Universiti Putra Malaysia and Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia.

Meanwhile the 'pro-establishment' groups took over seven of the mostly newer universities such as Universiti Teknologi Mara, Kolej Universiti Tun Hussein Onn and Kolej Universiti Islam Malaysia.