KUALA LUMPUR: Umno president Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi has defended the party's decision to postpone its polls for all positions at branch, division and supreme council levels.
This is despite the Registrar of Societies (RoS) yesterday saying the postponement was invalid.
RoS director-general Jasri Kasim said this was because the decision to postpone the party polls for 18 months was based on the minutes of the Umno Supreme Council (MT) meeting on July 7 when the MT term for 2018/21 had in fact ended on June 30, 2021.
Jasri said Umno must submit an application to postpone the general meeting or party election by submitting a proposed date to the RoS soon.
In his argument, Zahid said the postponement was necessary as Umno "never had an experience conducting its meetings, assemblies and elections online".
"Concerns of high technical errors with difficulty of internet coverage in rural areas are a real problem.
"The Umno secretary-general (Datuk Seri Ahmad Maslan) has provided thorough clarification on matters involving the party election that was brought up by the RoS.
"If it can't be conducted online, then the election must be postponed to a date when the Covid-19 pandemic is more manageable," he said in a statement posted on his Facebook page today.
At the same time, Zahid also dismissed detractors' attempts to compare Umno's postponement to parliament's last-minute adjournment, claiming the two occasions are different.
He said with 3.3 million Umno members nationwide, the party would have to handle 66,287 meetings involving 21,135 at branch levels, 21,058 for the women; youth (15,496) and Puteri wings (8,598 meetings).
"There will also be 764 divisional delegate conferences comprising 191 conferences for each of the four levels in the division, women, youth and puteri levels.
"The Parliament sitting, on the other hand, can still proceed with strict SOPs and compliance (of SOP by attendees) can be easily monitored.
"We are worried that this latest development might simply be a desperate action by the PN government to put pressure and weaken Umno," Zahid said.
Recently, Zahid and 10 other Umno MPs announced their revocation of support for Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin and the Perikatan Nasional government, claiming more parliamentarians from the party would follow suit.
However, 21 Umno MPs announced the next day in a press conference that they, along with 10 others who were not present, would continue to support Muhyiddin, although two of the MPs named said they are on Zahid's side instead.
Following this, Zahid had questioned the intentions of the 21 MPs, asking if their loyalty now no longer lies with Umno.
"Do those supporting PN, which is led by Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia's president (Muhyiddin), approve of the government's action against their own party?
"I call on them to open their hearts and remember the real political struggles for the sake of the people and the nation," Zahid said.