KUALA LUMPUR, June 30 ― Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi is the new Umno president in the highly-anticipated internal polls for the party that is seeking to rebuild itself after a crushing electoral defeat.
In the official early results announced by Umno secretary-general Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor at 12.30am, former deputy prime minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi was confirmed to have received 78 votes, while runner up Rembau MP Khairy Jamaluddin received 53 votes.
Tan Sri Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah garnered the support of 28 divisions.
The other relatively unknown candidates in the five-man race for the Umno president post are Bandar Tun Razak committee member Mohamed Iqbal Maricair and Iskandar Puteri member Mohd Yusof Musa@Jamaluddin.
Neither garnered any votes today.
Tengku Adnan said the party would release a statement of the complete results in the morning after tabulation of the votes had been done.
Following the 13-party Barisan Nasional's (BN) shock defeat in the 14th general elections where it lost federal power for the first time after failing to achieve a simple parliamentary majority, Datuk Seri Najib Razak resigned as coalition chairman and its mainstay party Umno president.
Zahid, who won his Bagan Datuk parliamentary seat for the sixth time with a 5,073 majority in a three-corner contest, then took on the role of Umno acting president and acting chairman of BN which is now reduced to three parties.
