Clock ticks down to Umno polls kick-off tomorrow

Umno elections kick off tomorrow and for the first time, the party will put into use a new electoral system with an enlarged voter population.

About 220,000 representatives from the party's Wanita, Youth and Puteri wings will choose their divisional and central leaders tomorrow.

At the central Umno level, about 146,500 eligible voters will choose the party's supreme council members, including a closely-watched contest for the vice-presidency. This will take place on Oct 19.

The expanded voting base is the result of amendment to the party constitution in 2009, which was intended to usher in a more democratic process within Umno, and at the same time, supplant the opposition in the future.

For Shahrizat Abdul Jalil (centre, in photo), the incumbent Umno Wanita leader, her fate and vision for the wing to become the backbone of Umno will be decided by 100,000 voters, a sharp rise from the previous 800.

And for the Youth and Umno Puteri wings, the voters now number 70,000 and 50,000 respectively.

Four candidates are gunning for incumbent Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin's post, while the Puteri leadership is open for grabs as previous the top two Puteri leaders - Rosnah Abdul Rashid Shirlin and Shahanim Yusof - have both vacated their positions.

Simultaneous voting

Altogether, polling will be simultaneously carried out at all of Umno's 191 divisions.

The process will go like this:

From 8am, Umno representatives and voters will be registered before the divisional or party wings have their regular assembly meetings, where yearly accounts and activity reports are presented.

When these meetings end, the Umno election committee takes over and convenes the election process. Voting papers are handed out, marked and inserted into the allocated boxes for the respective positions and divisions.

A separate voting process is carried out for each party wing at the same time that voting for the divisional heads are carried out.

The votes are then checked by respective regional division heads, before being verified by appointed accountants.

After that, the vote count begins.

The election results for the divisional heads will be announced by the permanent division chairperson whereas the winners of the central party leadership positions will be announced at the party's headquarters.

Members can expect the results for Umno wing positions at the central level to be revealed very early the next morning, between 2am and 3 am on Sunday, Oct 13.

Similarly, after the voting for the supreme council on Oct 19, the results will be announced early on Oct 20.