Malay political unity is a chimaera

Free Malaysia Today

25-05-2025

From Terence Netto
Malay political unity is not a magic wand that a leader can wave and just like that, a fragmented polity will emerge united.
There was Malay unity from the time of the community's opposition to the Malayan Union proposals of the British shortly after World War II.
That unity, which saw the proposals withdrawn under Malay pressure, held intact for four decades under the tutelage of Umno, but later began to fray and break under the overly long premiership of Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
Mahathir is now on record as saying that Malay unity unravelled under his successors, which is not accurate.
Semangat 46, the Umno splinter group, was formed during the premiership of Mahathir. It was a consequence of the contest between Mahathir and Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah for the Umno presidency in 1987.
Semangat did not last long, but its dissolution and return to Umno in 1995 was a foretaste of the convulsions in Umno and consequent fragmentations in the Malay vote.
That became plain when Umno president Mahathir sacked his deputy, Anwar Ibrahim, in September 1998.
With that, the Malay vote split further, following the formation of Parti Keadilan Nasional in 1999, which later morphed into PKR in 2003.
The fragmentation of Malay unity was not just the consequence of upheavals in Umno, of which Mahathir and his authoritarian ways was the cause.
Splits also occurred in PAS, Umno's longtime rival for the Malay vote. In 2015, the Islamic party saw a departure from its ranks of the progressive forces within it.
The upshot: Amanah was formed in late 2015 when the progressives who hitherto had co-existed uneasily with the conservatives in PAS were routed in internal elections in June that year.
In the cases of both Umno and PAS, the authoritarianism of the party supremo – Mahathir in Umno and Abdul Hadi Awang in PAS – fomented the fissures that eventuated in a splinter party being formed.
The party supremo's tendency to favour loyalists, who happened to be mediocre, over capable individuals whose loyalty could not be guaranteed bred discontent and ultimately weakened the party.
As a result of these trends, Malay unity withered on the vine.
An upsurge in the number of 'jaguh kampung', or leaders who champion race and religion in Umno, undermined the delicate balance the party had previously maintained between the competing interests of the nation's races.
In the pre-Mahathir past, Umno was pretty good at surveying the national horizon of circumstance and while defending and advancing the Malay interest, refrained from too robust an advocacy.
It was a balance that was comfortable with the notion of Malay primacy in all matters. Under Mahathir, this balance was eroded by the notion of Malay dominance.
Its destructive effects were seen in the increased competition for positions in Umno. This engendered corruption and abuse of power.
Under Mahathir's 22-year premiership, the seeds of Malay disunity were sown through this transgression – the imposition of destructive Malay dominance over sensible Malay primacy.
The physician ought to heal himself.
Terence Netto is a senior journalist and an FMT reader.
The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.