NajibPrime Minister Najib Abdul Razak is finally out of the woods after he won the UMNO presidency uncontested despite initial concerns of an ouster attempt for leading BN to its worst showing in history.
His Deputy, Muhyiddin Yassin, also won the party’s Deputy Presidency uncontested.
This was announced by executive secretary Abdul Rauf Yusof at a press conference in Kuala Lumpur shortly after the nomination process ended at 5pm.
Najib’s predecessor, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, was pushed out of office after he led BN to an abysmal performance in 2008.
Though Najib’s 2013 general election performance for BN was worse than Abdullah’s, he was able to improve UMNO’s performance, with the party capturing 88 parliamentary seats, up nine from 2008.
Abdul Rauf announced a total of 261 nominations were accepted for the party election this time.
The nominations covered positions in the supreme council and three party wings, name youth, women and puteri. He said a total of six candidates are vying for the UMNO Vice-Presidency spots while five are going for UMNO Youth chief, three for UMNO Wanita chief and two for UMNO Puteri chief.
The other nominations were for positions as permanent chairperson and its deputy as well as exco members for all the stated wings.
Following the nomination, there will be a 72-hour cooling off period where candidates can decide to withdraw from the contest if they have second thoughts. The final candidates list will only be released after that, next Tuesday.