KUALA LUMPUR: UMNO Supreme Council member Datuk Seri Ahmad Shabery Cheek has questioned the call for the UMNO election to be expedited while the parliamentary session involving only 220 members was postponed.

Agreeing that the party's election could no longer be postponed, however, he was however skeptical of the course of the election process, especially at the branch and division level of the party.

The question is, how can meetings and the election process at the branch level be safer than the parliamentary session when the party has more than 21,000 branches and 191 divisions nationwide.

"In the UMNO system, the election must start with the election at the branch level. Many branches have a membership of around 500 people.

"In Johor there are branches with more than 1,000 members while in Sabah the largest branch in the Libaran division has up to 2,700 members. All are eligible to vote.

"At the divisional level, the delegates are between 700 to 2,000 people depending on the size of the membership and branches. In Sabah, many delegates have to travel the day before the election, from remote areas and islands.

"The total number of eligible delegates to vote is 150,000 people. They will also vote for the central leadership," he said in a post on his personal Facebook.

He also expressed concern over the issue of violation of standard operating procedures (SOPs) and the total quorum of conferences at the branch and division levels as the country was still in a period of emergency.

Ahmad Shabery, however, agreed with the view of Rembau Member of Parliament, Khairy Jamaluddin who said that if the election is held after the 15th General Election (GE15), it does not guarantee that UMNO will become stronger.

"There are a lot that I agree with KJ (Khairy) except for a few things. Everything is based on data and science.

"UMNO's election cannot be postponed after GE15 because we don't know when GE15 will be held. At the latest in 2023. How many times do we need to postpone it?

"This is data and science. I agree that the party election after the GE does not guarantee that UMNO will be stronger.

"The evidence is we lost GE14 even though there was no (party) election before that. This is also data and science. I agree," he said.