Umno faces its history’s most divisive battle

Umno faces its history’s most divisive battle



From Terence Netto

The 75-year-old Umno’s propensity to factional strife has become more virulent in recent times.

The country’s biggest and long dominant political party has a tendency to witness the pitting of one faction against another every 10 years or so.

No doubt, these bouts of factional strife shook but they did not sunder the party.

True, the periodic stresses gave rise to splinters – Semangat 46 in the 1980s, Parti Keadilan Nasional in the 1990s (precusor of PKR) and Bersatu in the second decade of the 2000s – but the corporate body showed remarkable resilience after each ruction.

Predictions of the demise or even waning of Umno during its periodic convulsions put one in mind of Mark Twain’s comment on reports of his death: they were “greatly exaggerated.”

A look at the history of Umno’s periodic bouts of internecine strife should give pause to doomsayers.

The strife in Umno in the mid-1970s over the Harun Idris affair, grave as it was, did possess enough voltage to cause a schism. It did not do so.

It engendered, though, enough fallout to force the earlier-than-expected retirement of Hussein Onn as Prime Minister in mid-1981. That was all.

The next enactment of this intramural fueding led to the formation in 1987 of the splinter, Semangat 46, headed by Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah.

However, Semangat 46 lasted only until 1996 when it folded. Its remnants rejoined Umno.

The next iteration of internal tumult in Umno two years later was more seismic, but Umno still managed to weather the storm.

Umno held out, at the general elections of 1999 and, more formidably, that of 2004, against the Anwar Ibrahim-inspired opposition grouping of PKR, DAP and (in 1999) PAS.

However, after successive diminutions of Umno’s electoral hegemony in the general elections of 2008 and 2013, Umno’s ouster from Putrajaya at GE14 in 2018 exposed new veins of vulnerability in its facade.

Fifteen MPs from Umno abandoned it to join Bersatu in the ruling Pakatan Harapan coalition that replaced the Umno-led BN government in Putrajaya in May 2018..

Then after Bersatu conspired with Umno and PAS, aided and abetted by a slew of smaller parties from Sarawak, Sabah and Peninsular Malaysia, the upshot was the formation of Perikatan Nasional, led by Muhyiddin Yassin, now in charge of Bersatu, who convinced the King they possessed a parliamentary majority.

This new set-up was granted the right to rule.

Though Umno was the largest component of this coalition, it did not ask for the top prize: the PM’s post.

This concession was tactical; it was Umno’s way of stooping to conquer.

A shrewd Muhyiddin proferred inducements for Umno’s complaisance: Several of its MPs were given ministerial positions and several others were appointed to top positions in GLCs.

These inducements not only lulled its recipients but caused a breach to open up between them and an Umno coterie disdainful of Muhyiddin’s blandishments.

But as 2021 stretched, and as Muhyiddin flailed in a losing battle against a rampaging Covid-19, the Umno hierarchy grew testy with its subordinate position in the ruling PN coalition.

Umno has retracted support for Muhyiddin’s premiership and demanded he resign on grounds he no longer commands a parliamentary majority.


Umno has also directed all its MPs and GLCs appointees to quit their positions.

The anti-Muhyiddin forces in Umno, led by party president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, regard Bersatu as an interloper on parliamentary turf Umno considers its temporarily-lost bastions, to be retaken at GE15.

Umno views its MPs who support Muhyiddin as harlots out to sell the party for the pharoah’s gold of ministerial and GLC appointments.

Umno regards the 15 MPs who contested and won their seats on its ticket in GE14 before crossing over to Bersatu as renegades who Umno is sure will get their comeuppance at GE15.

These stances of Umno are certain to cause a divide in the party more intractable than the gulfs that opened up between Umno and Semangat 46 in the 1980s and the one that separated the party from the Anwaristas who decamped for PKR in the late 1990s.

In sum, Umno faces its most divisive battle in its long history.

It remains to be seen if Umno, in the wake of its current deadly strife between the anti- and pro-Muhyiddin Yassin factions, will be like the old soldier of General Douglas MacArthur’s wistful formulation – a figure who will never die though he might just fade away.