They think that expressions representing numbers are actually numbers.
On 11 Jun 2023, former Umno Supreme Council member Annuar Musa claimed at a ceramah in Negeri Sembilan that over 2 million Umno members have quit the party since the 2013 General Election.
In 2013, UMNO reportedly said it had 3.3 million members.
Three years ago, in Dec 2019, at the opening of the Umno General Assembly, the same Annuar Musa, who was the then Secretary General in Umno, said that after cleaning up the 73-year-old party's membership registration between Dec 2018 to February 2019, only 2% of its total registered 3.6 million members had jumped ship to other political parties while another 4% had died with all their names already removed from the membership list.
He said that after the cleaning-up process, the party still has 3,292,667 members, with 22,156 active branches in 199 divisions nationwide, as of Dec 2019.
In the statement in Dec 2019, Annuar Musa clearly and conveniently forgot that UMNO was not 73 years in 2019.
The UMNO, formed on 11 May 1946, was declared illegal on Feb 1988 by the High Courts of Malaya.
UMNO Baru was formed on 13 Feb 1988, which remains until today.
Thus, UMNO, the political party in today's political landscape, is only 31 years old as of 2019.
On 26 Mar 2021, Ahmad Maslan, the then Secretary General of UMNO, said when tabling the party's Annual Statement 2019/2020 at the UMNO General Assembly 2020 that UMNO recorded a membership of approximately 3.35 million people involving 21,883 branches nationwide and of the total, 127,214 were new UMNO members who joined the party from 9 May 2018 to March 2021.
Ahmad Maslan again states that Umno has 3,391,236 members from its 22,274 branches and 191 divisions nationwide as of 15 Mar 2022 when tabling the party's annual statement during the 2021 Umno General Assembly.
Just last week, the present Umno secretary-general Dr Asyraf Wajdi Dusuki, said in his speech at the 2023 Umno General Assembly that as of 6 Jun 2023, Umno has a total of 3,442,280 members from 22,125 branches in 191 divisions around the country.
The figure, he said, included 13,442 new members who joined the party between 1 Jan 2023 and 6 Jun 2023.
If what Annuar Musa claimed is true, UMNO should only have 1.4 million members and not the 3.4 million members that the present Secretary General claimed in the 2023 Umno General Assembly.
Vice versa, if what the present Secretary General claimed in the 2023 Umno General Assembly is true, then Annuar Musa's claim that over 2 million Umno members have quit the party since the 2013 General Election appears to reveal that there is something wrong with the way he sees numbers.
In 2001, when responding to the Hardcore Poverty Development Projects (PPRT), Annuar claimed it was an attempt to "politically assassinate" him as the allegations were alleged to have occurred during his tenure as rural development minister; he said what was needed was a thorough investigation in accordance with the law.
Maybe in the claim made by him that over 2 million Umno members have quit, Umno should conduct a thorough investigation in accordance with the party constitution and take action per the law if the claim were proven false.
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