PETALING JAYA: PKR's election to pick national leaders has run into a major glitch in Kelantan involving the Tumpat and Kota Baru divisions.
The voting at these two divisions, which are said to favour party Federal Territories chief and supreme council member Zaid Ibrahim for deputy president, has yet to start although voting was supposed to have begun at 10am.
PKR is the first political party in the country to introduce the "one-member, one-vote" system where party members are given the opportunity to pick national leaders directly. It is estimated that a total of 400,000 PKR members would be eligible to cast their ballots to pick the national leaders.
All eyes are on the deputy president battle with three "big names" in contention. Apart from Zaid, PKR vice-presidents Mustapha Kamil Ayub and Azmin Ali are also in this battle royale. The president post was won uncontested by Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, wife of PKR supremo Anwar Ibrahim.
PKR member Adnan Ibrahim told FMT that in Kota Baru as at 10am today, ballots for the PKR Wanita deputy chief post had yet to arrive, thus delaying the entire voting process.
He said he was informed by the Kota Baru PKR Wanita chief Wan Norjan Wan Sulaiman through telephone that voting had been delayed.
“Wan Norjan confirmed that there was a delay in the ballots to pick the deputy Wanita chief. The voting process has been interrupted because of this and an party election official only known by Joe and another election official from Rantau Panjang had decided to continue with the process despite this problem," he told FMT.
Meanwhile, he was also made to understand that the ballot papers for the Tumpat division only arrived at 12.10pm.
This, he claimed, made it difficult for members to vote as today being Friday, the Muslim members would have to perform their Friday prayers. Voting is expected to close at 4pm.
"This will give them very little time to vote. The problem should not have arisen in the first place. It should have been planned well but this is not the case. I hope this delay is not intentional as it is an open secret that these divisions had backed Zaid for the party number two post," he added.
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