The UMNO man who destroyed UMNO again and again

One person has destroyed UMNO twice. And only an UMNO man or to be more technical, an ex UMNO man, could have done that.

The original UMNO was the one formed by Onn Jaafar on 10 May 1946 in Johor Baru, and then taken over and nurtured by Tunku Abdul Rahman, Tun Razak and Hussein Onn (son of Onn Jaafar). Let's call it UMNO 1.0.

Both Onn Jaafar and his successor, Tunku, did not merajuk dahsyat like a spoiled 9.3 year old brat when they had a disagreement over party membership policy. No, they did not go about destroying the party - in all likelihood each believed in and respected that the party was far more important than either of them. In all their nobility, civility and sportsmanship that they had consistently shown throughout their lives, they took-handed over power in UMNO in an orderly fashion.

UMNO 1.0 went on until 1987-8.

In that time, a young UMNO bloke by the name of Mahathir, as Wikipedia and our history inform us, lost his Kota Setar Selatan parliamentary election in the 1969 election after he arrogantly dismissed the constituency's Chinese voters, sneering at them and saying he didn't need their votes.

OK, so they listened to him and gave all their votes to Yusof Rawa, head of PMIP (Predecessor fo PAS), who, Alhamdulillah, won, wakakaka.

T'was the first time Chinese en mass voted for PMIP (PAS), thanks to the arrogant nasty racist words of Mahathir

Folowing his shocking and padan muka loss, he wrote a nasty biadab-ish letter to Tunku, president of UMNO. He also circulated that letter openly in an organised campaign with UM lecturer Raja Muktaruddin Daim among the student body of local universities.

Then May 13 occurred - there are stories behind this tragedy, but this post is not about them. Anyhow, following the deliberate circulation of Mahathir's letter to Tunku, mass demonstrations broke out calling for "Malay sovereignty" and the Tunku's ouster.

UMNO then agreed to expel the Young Turks, Mahathir and former Executive Secretary of UMNO Musa Hitam from the party for breaching party discipline. Mahathir was not a disciplined party man even in those days.

Wikipedia informs us that:

As a result of the riots, Parliament was suspended, and a state of national emergency was declared. A National Operations Council (NOC) was formed to oversee the administration of the country under emergency rule.

Although the rioting had died down, tensions continued to simmer. A non-Malay boycott of Malay goods and services received "near total" support, while many Malays, such as Mahathir Mohamad and Raja Muktaruddin Daim began calling for an autocracy led by UMNO alone, and the removal of the Tunku.

Mahathir after being expelled from UMNO became even more notorious by authoring The Malay Dilemma, but which was immediately banned from Malaysia for its racist contents.

Mahathir's book claimed (from Wiki): ... the Malays are the definitive people of Malaysia, and thus deserved special rights as the sovereign people of the nation. It also controversially argued that the Malays needed affirmative action to overcome deficiencies in their genetic stock.

Shortly thereafter, Tun Razak, himself less tolerant-to-Chinese than Tunku, recalled the UMNO Young Turks back into the party and government. When Tun Razak passed away in London in Jan 1976 due to serious illness, Hussein Onn assumed the role of PM but it was in his succession that UMNO was first destroyed, wakakaka.

In this story I am cutting corners here, so referring to Wiki, it tells us:

The 1987 [UMNO leadership] contest was a vastly different matter. Mahathir was opposed by his very popular former Finance Minister, Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah. The press took to referring to Mahathir and his supporters as Team A, and Razaleigh's camp as Team B.

Team B included then Deputy Prime Minister Tun Musa Hitam, who was also the incumbent Deputy President of UMNO seeking re-election, as well as Datuk Suhaimi kamaruddin, the former head of UMNO Youth and president of the Belia 4B youth organisation.

Team B was critical of Mahathir's policies, arguing that the NEP had failed to benefit the poor Malays. It also criticised Mahathir's leadership style, alleging he acted unilaterally without consulting other leaders in UMNO and the Barisan Nasional. Team B was also perceived as less Islamist than Mahathir's faction.

Mahathir claimed that the charges against him were groundless, and suggested that his opponents were fracturing Malay unity and were only motivated by greed.

Eventually, Mahathir was returned to office. However, he was elected with such a small majority of 43 (761 against 718 votes) that questions were immediately raised about his mandate. Team B supporters, many of whom had been anticipating a victory of similar margins, suspected that the election had been fixed.

The Team B candidate for Deputy President, Musa Hitam, had also been defeated by Gaafar Baba of Team A, while two of the three Vice-Presidents were Team A candidates. The Supreme Council comprised 16 Team A candidates and 9 Team B candidates.

Allegations were made that several delegates who had voted were drawn from UMNO branches not properly registered. There were also several unproved allegations being bandied about that the balloting process had not been above board.

Nevertheless, Razaleigh pledged to support Mahathir, provided that a "witch hunt" was not launched. However, Mahathir promptly purged the government cabinet of all Team B members, and launched similar reshuffles in state and local governments.

Wakakaka, we would see more of Mahathir's modus operandi against his party opponents-rivals.

To cut the story short, after Team B launched an appeal to have the party elections declared null and void, and the Court declared UMNO an illegal party, and of course RoS refused Tunku and Hussein Onn's attempt to form UMNO Malaysia as a legal replacement, Mahathir moved swiftly to form UMNO Baru, or what we now call UMNO 2.0, wakakaka.

Yes, UMNO 2.0 was formed by Mahathir in 1988 to marginalise Tengku Razaleigh. UMNO 2.0 survived from 1988 to 2018 when it's now being gradually abandoned by frogs hopping over to Mahathir's Pribumi, wakakaka. We can safely predict that Mahathir will eventually (very shortly) succeed in destroying UMNO again, this time his own creation of UMNO Baru or UMNO 2.0.

A very amazing Captain Destruction, Mahathir has in his CV the track record of destroying UMNO twice.

This time his Pribumi party, once replete with enough sapu-ed frogs, will become UMNO 3.0 or UMNO Baru-er, wakakaka.

As can be witnessed, Mahathir didn't and doesn't care about UMNO but only his own interests, thus he has and will destroy his or any party to serve his needs - yes, he has destroyed UMNO 1.0 and his own creation of UMNO 2.0.