A look at Malaysia's UMNO, 50 years on

A look at Malaysia's UMNO, 50 years on

By Shamsul A.B.

After shaping Malaysia's political, social and economic life
for half a century, the United Malays National Organization
appears intent on continuing this dominance well into the 21st
century. Shamsul A.B. traces its history.

The United Malays National Organization (UMNO), the political
party in Malaysia's post-war history, is celebrating its 50th
anniversary this month. Its birth, in May 1946, reinstalled the
traditional royalty-based Malay polity, known as kerajaan.
Through the union of the kerajaan, held together by the
Federation of Malaya Agreement 1948, a federal framework was put
in place. It subsequently became the foundation for the formation
of the Federation of Malaya (1957) and later Malaysia (1963).

In 1991, Datuk Dr. Seri Mahathir Mohamad, prime minister and
UMNO president, proclaimed his now-famous "Vision 2020", in which
he called for the creation of "a united Malaysian nation" by the
year 2020. For over five decades UMNO has therefore shaped
Malaysia's political, social and economic life. It would appear
that UMNO intends to continue this dominance well into the 21st
century. It is, however, also a political myth that UMNO is all-
powerful, as some analysts have assumed. History has shown that,
as a Malay-based party, UMNO has not always enjoyed the total
support of the Malays.

UMNO's historical development can be analyzed in Eric
Hobsbawm's framework of postwar global history which he outlined
in his brilliant book, Age of Extremes (1994). According to
Hobsbawm, the postwar world first went through a "Golden Age"
(1947-1973) and then experienced the "Crisis Decades" (1974-
1991). UMNO was indeed in its "Golden Age" for the first three
decades of its existence. It was responsible for initiating and
instituting the Federation of Malaya Agreement 1948. It
successfully formed a coalition party, the Alliance, with the
Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) and the Malaysian Indian
Congress as its non-Malay partners in 1951. Together they won all
but one seat in the 1955 general elections, subsequently
negotiating independence from the British in 1957.

UMNO, as the dominant party in the coalition government, was
inevitably the major player in the formation of Malaysia in 1963.
Also, it successfully steered Malaysia through the Confrontation
years (1963-1966) with Indonesia. The traumatic event of May 13,
1969, was indeed the biggest test for UMNO and its partners. They
not only survived but emerged stronger when the pro-Malay
affirmative action plan, called the New Economic Policy (NEP),
was launched in 1971.

From 1971, UMNO's influence was unchallenged and it was able
to transform and expand the Alliance into a larger coalition
party, called the National Front, which was officially registered
in 1974. Even UMNO's famous opponent, Parti Islam, joined the
National Front.

From the mid-1970s, as signs of Malaysia's "Golden Age" began
to appear on the horizon, UMNO's internal problems came under
public scrutiny. On the surface, these problems emerged as
serious factional conflicts, particularly at the national
leadership level. At a deeper level, problems could be traced to
the nascent signs of money politics.

The floodgates opened in the mid-1970s, with the much
publicized Harun Idris corruption scandal, which dragged on from
1975 to 1977. Then, in 1978, for the first time in UMNO's
history, the incumbent leader (the late Tun Hussein Onn) was
challenged. It also saw the emergence of money politics, in which
all posts within the party were for sale.

The 1980s ushered in the bruising "battle of giants" between
Musa Hitam and Tengku Razaleigh for the position of UMNO deputy
president in 1981 and 1984. Concurrently, an UMNO cabinet
minister was convicted of the murder of another high-ranking UMNO
official and sentenced to life imprisonment. High noon was 1987,
when UMNO split into two factions and a battle ensued between
Team A and Team B, in which the former, led by Dr. Mahathir and
his deputy, Ghafar Baba, emerged victorious with the smallest
margin imaginable.

The coup de grace came in February 1988, when the High Court
declared UMNO an unlawful society as a result of a legal suit
brought against UMNO (Team A) by supporters of Team B. In a
matter of months UMNO was reinstalled by Team A under a new name,
UMNO Baru, and Team B set up a new party, called Semangat 46
(literally Spirit of 46, referring to the original UMNO founded
in 1946).

The early 1990s saw the unseating of UMNO's deputy president,
Ghafar Baba, by a group of Young Turks, calling themselves the
"Vision Team". They were led by Anwar Ibrahim, the present UMNO
deputy president and deputy prime minister. Stories of nepotism,
sexual scandals, voodoo-style murder and corruption involving
UMNO leaders continued to fill the front pages of newspapers.

Ironically, as UMNO went through its "Crisis Decade", Malaysia
entered its "Golden Age", sustaining an unprecedented economic
growth rate of more than 8 percent for nearly 10 years and a
repositioning of the economy from an agriculture base to an
manufacturing base. Malaysia was also able to simultaneously
establish itself as a credible middle-order international power
and a model to be emulated.

Why was UMNO in turmoil while Malaysia was economically
booming? Two possible explanations can be offered.

First, the fruits of material success from the implementation
of Malaysia's NEP redefined UMNO's ground rules. Official party
positions were perceived as commodities which could be bought and
sold.

More importantly, UMNO also reconstituted the composition of
its members, with the new Malay middle class and a group of
corporate players dominating its realpolitik at the expense of
the once powerful school teachers, local bureaucrats and
peasants. The dominance of the former, in effect, opened forever
the realm of UMNO politics to a larger political constituency.
UMNO is no longer a party of the kampong folk. Instead, it is a
party for those who are interested in both "the politics of
business" and "the business of politics" in Malaysia.

Second, and relatedly, UMNO has increasingly been seen
nationally as the "broker of wealth" by predominantly non-Malay
Malaysian commercial groups. Most Chinese businesses no longer
consider it necessary to go through either the MCA or any other
Chinese-dominated party within the National Front to have access
to the country's wealth. This, in fact, led the MCA to change its
party strategy in the early 1990s, dropping its economic role,
and now focusing on educational and cultural matters.

Although UMNO exists as a party for the Malays, it is also the
party anyone interested in the country's wealth wants to be
associated with. The pool of material resources at UMNO's command
has expanded tremendously.

For most of its 50-year existence, UMNO has championed the
cause of the rural Malay poor. It has made endless attempts to
break "the vicious circle of poverty" experienced by the latter.
Ironically, in the last two decades, as more rural Malays have
begun to enjoy the fruits of UMNO's hard work, the party itself
is now struggling to break "the vicious circle of wealth" which
is now beleaguering its existence.

Dr. Shamsul A.B. is Professor of Social Anthropology at the
Department of Anthropology and Sociology, Universiti Kebangsaan
Malaysia.