Two members of the Tanah Merah Umno division in Kelantan have claimed that about 3,000 students of Universiti Teknologi Mara's (UiTM) Machang campus have been registered as members of the division, with or without their knowledge.

Amran Abdul Rahman and Bahari Mohamad Noor told malaysiakini yesterday that they have proof that some of the students had voted during recent branch meetings in favour of the candidate contesting the division's top post.

They stressed that they were acting in other capacities in raising the issue - they are office bearers in different youth organisations in Tanah Merah.

Bahari said the Tanah Merah Umno division has 106 branches with about 12,000 members. However, when the membership list was scrutinised before the branch meetings, it was discovered that the number had swelled to 23,712.

"About 80 percent of the new members were registered this year. More surprisingly, a contender for the division's top post had paid the membership fees of all the 23,000 members with a personal cheque," he said.

Report lodged

Malaysiakini understands the division's incumbent chief Hashim Safin obtained 33 nominations while his sole challenger, incumbent Youth chief Ikmal Hisham Abdul Aziz, secured 73 nominations.

But the division meeting, scheduled for July 20, was postponed indefinitely after
Hashim lodged a report with the Umno disciplinary committee.

He alleged that money politics was rampant at branch meetings and that students were also being made use of as voters at branch elections.

The same report was submitted to the Kelantan Umno monitoring committee and to Umno deputy president Najib Abdul Razak, who chairs the party's management committee.

Bahari said the presence of 'outsiders' was easily detected as "most branches are located in small villages with some 20 to 30 families in each ... and as such, they practically know each other."

"Following this, a further check was carried out to see whether they (new members) have relatives in their respective branches or whether they are already members of Umno branches elsewhere," he explained.

Eventually, he said, it was discovered that almost 3,000 new members were UiTM students from the Machang campus.

(Students are prohibited by the Universities and University Colleges Act from becoming members of any political party and from active participation in politics.)

Quorum factor

The matter was brought to the attention of the Umno supreme council which decided that only members registered on or before Dec 31, 2003 would be eligible to vote in the branch meetings.

That left about 15,200 members eligible to vote, out of whom about 3,500 were registered in September and December last year.

Asked why anyone would take the trouble to register thousands of new members as they could easily be identified as outsiders, Bahari explained that these people do not have to attend the meetings - constitutionally, only one-third of the total membership suffices to form a quorum.

"What matters most here is the number of delegates attending the divisional meeting to elect new office bearers ... the bigger a branch, the more delegates it is allowed to send," he said.

According to Bahari, some of the UiTM students had admitted that they were paid to participate and vote in the branch meetings.

"Fearing that it would jeopardise their studies, some have made statutory declarations to confess how they were led to become involved," he added.

Amran and Bahari had lodged a police report on the matter on July 25. Yesterday, they lodged a similar report with Suhakam.