KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 18 — The Malaysian United Democratic Alliance (Muda) said today it will speed up its internal election to bring in new faces for a fresh start, following a dismal showing at the recent six state elections.
In a statement, Muda said it will hold a post-mortem meeting on August 26, and confirmed the vacancy of the information chief's post after the resignation of the previous officer Luqman Long.
“Muda held its executive meeting on August 18 where we discussed several matters with the main focus on our performance at the state elections, vacancies of several posts and Muda's need to fill in the vacancies in the party.
“The post-mortem will be held on August 26 and we have confirmed that Luqman Long has vacated his post as information chief. We will announce a new information chief in the new future and we've also decided to hasten our election process so we can inject a breath of fresh air with new faces into Muda,”
Earlier this week, Luqman said he would still step down from his party post after vowing to do so if he failed to secure his deposit in contesting the Bandar seat in Terengganu.
Luqman received just 372 votes. The seat was won by PAS' Ahmad Shah Mohamed with a 2,384-vote majority.
All 19 of Muda's candidates fielded in the recent state elections lost their deposits after having failed to gain one-eighth or 12.5 per cent of the votes in their respective constituencies.
As the deposit for each candidate stands at RM5,000, the total financial loss to the youth-led party is RM95,000.
Muda originally announced a lineup of 20 candidates, but its candidate for the Negeri Sembilan state assembly seat in Repah Muhammad Noriswan Ishak reportedly withdrew from contesting the day before nomination day, citing personal reasons.
After the votes were counted, party president Syed Saddiq Abdul Rahman said that the party takes full responsibility for the election outcome.
