A candidate, who failed to secure an Umno supreme council seat in the party elections last week, claimed that the voting process lacked transparency.

Speaking to malaysiakini today, he said the manner in which the counting and recording of ballot papers were carried out left much room for doubt.

According to the party leader, 20 agents of candidates to the Youth wing's executive committee had allegedly walked out of the hall in protest over the lack of transparency in the proceedings.

"They walked out, because what's the use of them being there if they couldn't see if what were on the ballot papers was what was being keyed into the computer or was being counted towards the actual results? They were not allowed to come any closer to election workers," he said.

"There was not one candidate's agent who could say with full confidence that 'such-and-such was the number of votes that my candidate recieved' or 'which tallies with the final results as announced by the election committee'," said the Umno member, who declined to be named.

"I did not do very badly, considering I am a new face contesting for a supreme council seat, but the way in which the votes were counted and recorded was such that the representatives present to observe the proceedings could not verify that the 2,500-odd delegates' choices actually went towards the final results," he added.

According to the politician, both the election workers reading out the ballot papers as well as the workers keying in the votes into the computers were several meters away from the candidates' representatives, who were not allowed to come any nearer to verify the ballot.

At least one agent of a candidate for the party's supreme council was said to have been rudely shown the doors of the hall where the ballots were counted after he protested the vote-counting arrangements and the futility of his presence, claims the Umno member.

'Anything is possible'

The Umno politician insisted that his frustration was not due to the actual results of the elections as he had garnered a respectable number of votes.

"But I am frustrated at the lack of transparency in which the whole affair was conducted. The way the candidates' representatives were positioned, how could anybody feel confident that what was on the ballot papers was even keyed in properly, if not distorted either before or after the exercise," he said.

"With computers nowadays, anything is possible," he added.

His assertions come on the heels of questions surrounding rumours of money politics that have plagued the run-up to and following last week's elections.

The election results sent out shockwaves as relatively new 'outsiders' trounced the 'favourites'.

Three cabinet ministers and seven deputy ministers were edged out of the party's highest decision-making organ.