Umno party polls may be brought forward, before May - Zahid

Umno’s internal party polls may be brought forward and be held way before May next year when the six-month period after the 15th general election (GE15) is up, party president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi said.

Zahid said he will leave it to the delegates to decide when is the right time for the party elections to be held. 

He pointed out that party polls are not held during the Umno general assembly but done simultaneously with the party’s delegates’ divisions conference.

“191 divisions will simultaneously hold a conference nationwide, and hold divisional and central leadership elections.

“This means there is no need to wait for a period of six months for party elections. It may be held earlier.

“We must remember that March 22 or 23 is already Ramadan, then it’ll be Syawal and the month of haj,” Zahid said in a live-streamed interview on the NRChannel TV YouTube channel last night.

Contest for top two positions?

Zahid, who is also BN chairperson, said the Umno delegates would decide whether the presidency and deputy presidency should be contested in the party elections. 

Although it was decided at the 2017 Umno general assembly that the top two posts should not be contested, he said he was in favour of the positions being contested. 

Pointing out that there were a few instances where the posts were not contested, the deputy prime minister said among them were during Dr Mahathir Mohamad and Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s respective tenures when they helmed the top party position.

There were suggestions that the posts should not be contested during Najib Abdul Razak’s presidency, he said, but that did not materialise.

“As a democrat, I will leave it to the delegates to decide,” Zahid said in response to calls from the party members for both posts to be contested. 

On Monday, Umno secretary-general Ahmad Maslan was reported as saying that the party’s supreme council has not made a decision on whether the two posts will be contested in the forthcoming coming party leadership elections. 

The 2022 Umno general assembly that was scheduled for Dec 21 to 24 was postponed to Jan 11 to 14 next year.

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