Datuk Seri Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor says most of the signatures obtained by the Save Malaysia movement are from college and university students. ― Picture by Choo Choy May

KUALA LUMPUR, May 16 ― The one million signatures gathered by the Save Malaysia movement were mostly from college and university students, Umno secretary-general Datuk Seri Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor said today.

Tengku Adnan, who is also Federal Territories Minister, said Putrajaya has been “monitoring” the movement led by Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad and found that most of the signatures obtained for the campaign to unseat Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak were during visits to universities and colleges here.

“In the search for more signatures, he went to all colleges. These events held in all the colleges… we know where he went, in fact we are monitoring private and public universities,” he told reporters when met at the Dewan Rakyat today.

Tengku Adnan admitted that the youths were likely lending support to the movement because the federal government has not adequately engaged with them.

“These children, we have not engaged with them quite well and that is why he is getting all these signatures, we know,” he said when asked how the million signatures were obtained.

The Putrajaya MP insisted, however, that one million signatures would not impact the Barisan Nasional (BN) government in any way as it does not even make up 10 per cent of the Malaysian population.

“We have got 30 million people, say adults got 12 million. Out of there, only 10 percent they got. I don't think is any problem to us there.

“Out of the 10 per cent, you must remember whether they know what they doing or they don't know. Maybe they sign because they don't know,” Tengku Adnan said.

Dr Mahathir on Saturday claimed that the Citizens Declaration movement had collected 1.271 million signatures, out of which 1.07 million were done online and another 200,000 signatures on printed forms.