A Doctor in The House: A Memoir of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad (85 page)

But Team B wanted the courts to require UMNO to hold its entire party elections once again, on grounds that the votes of the unqualified delegates could have determined the final election result. I must admit that the possibility of another election worried me. I saw it as an unhealthy development because ambitious people would spend even more money to buy votes. Taking a party matter to the courts was also, in my view, not right as the matter should have been resolved internally. Tengku Razaleigh’s outside recourse made me lose respect for him. Following this episode, a new party rule was introduced so that anyone who took UMNO to court would lose his or her membership.

Tunku Abdul Rahman, meanwhile, continued to be open about his support for Team B. I wrote a letter to him to say that expressing his support publicly was not helping. He responded by saying that he thought holding another election was the right thing to do. I was aware of the irony of the situation and of the similarities between this correspondence and the one I had with the Tunku, just before I was expelled from UMNO. This time however, after he answered my letter, I decided to keep quiet.

Before the case went for judgment, the court granted a two-week postponement to allow an UMNO committee to try to resolve the dispute. Team A and Team B attempted to negotiate an out-of-court settlement but Team B insisted that another party election be held. They felt certain that, given more time, they would get the required number of votes in a new election. I too believed they might, especially since their method of persuasion was money. Holding the election again was not something we could accept; it would mean conceding everything the other side wanted. In the end, we had no choice but to let the court decide the case.

What happened next took everyone, including Team B, by surprise. High Court judge Tan Sri Harun Hashim dismissed the UMNO 11 suit, but ruled that under Section 12 (3) of the Societies Act, the existence of unregistered branches meant that UMNO itself in its entirety was an illegal party. His decision came like a thunderbolt. Never in the history of any country known to me had a judge decided that the ruling party was illegal. UMNO was not a small party—we had more than two million members and more than 2,000 branches. How could we ensure that every branch fulfilled every regulation to the letter? To condemn the entire party because a handful of members may have erred did not seem right. One must accept and respect court decisions but the reasoning in this one seemed unfair and unjust to me, even capricious. It was not a decision that I would say served the country well.

As soon as UMNO was declared illegal, the party’s assets were frozen. These included the UMNO buildings and corporate shares. We were in a state of flux at the time and as the party’s treasurer, Tengku Razaleigh had not yet given us a full account. When he did much later, it was to tell us that there was nothing in the party’s coffers. A story started circulating that, denied access to the party’s funds, we did not even have enough money to buy paper for the offices in UMNO’s headquarters. The truth was we were not that badly off. Our monthly expenditure at the UMNO headquarters was quite small; only during parliamentary elections would we spend more money. We had no debts and even our building had already been paid for.

The problem was less UMNO’s assets than its political identity. The leaders of Team A—myself, Tun Ghafar and a few others—knew that we had to move fast to retain control of its name. UMNO was a brand to which we had to lay our claim by registering our party before Team B did. It was now a race between Team A and Team B to register a new party that could pick up from where UMNO had left off. The old party had been condemned by the court so the new party had to be distinct from it, legally different and new. At the same time, it had to ensure that it would still own UMNO’s name, its history and its assets.

We submitted an application to the Registrar of Societies on 9 February 1988 to establish a party called UMNO 88, but it was rejected on the grounds that the old UMNO had not yet been officially de-registered. Team B’s application was also rejected, for the same reason. We re-submitted our application on 13 February and it was approved two days later. The new party, called United Malays National Organisation (New) or UMNO Baru, applied to become a member of the Barisan Nasional coalition on the same day. I had proposed changing the structure of the new party to make a small number of members responsible for all decisions, as I felt that its vast membership had made UMNO unmanageable. But others objected, insisting that UMNO Baru had to be a mass movement like its predecessor. Only mass participation, they argued, would ensure mass support.

Ever since that time some strange theories have circulated about this whole episode. I have heard people say that I let UMNO’s deregistration go forward because I saw it as a chance to set up a new party, made up only of members who were loyal to me. To support this theory, some alleged that it was UMNO’s lead counsel Datuk Gopal Sri Ram who drew attention to the section of the Societies Act that the judge cited in his decision. Others suggested that I did not fight against deregistration hard enough, since UMNO only offered a one-page response to the Registrar of Societies’ show-cause letter.

For my part, I could not have known whether our lawyer influenced the judge or not. If he did in that way, it was certainly without our knowledge. As for not protesting UMNO’s deregistration strongly enough, we did not want a prolonged appeal process. We just wanted to get on with the administration of the country. That was the responsibility of being in power, which our adversaries did not have. Without the administration’s duties to attend to, Team B could spend its time upon legalities, technical niceties and desperate politicking. For us, once UMNO was declared illegal, the most important thing to do was to register a new party which could be identified with UMNO. We succeeded in claiming that political inheritance and ensuring its historical continuity stayed in our hands.

Once the battle for UMNO was over, I concentrated on healing the rifts that had emerged within the party and ensuring that as many members as possible of the old UMNO now registered with UMNO Baru. Getting people, especially our Malay constituents, to accept UMNO Baru did not prove difficult. Over the course of about a year, we travelled to all the states to re-introduce the party, gather popular support, and ensure party leaders were in touch with the grassroots. We explained that UMNO Baru was essentially the same old party, with the same principles and the same struggle as the UMNO they had always known and supported. We also used identical flags and symbols, and made sure that “Baru” was shown in very light print in our letterheads. Eventually, people stopped using the word altogether and it was dropped completely from the party’s name. It was important that we be the UMNO that everyone knew and remembered. If we were UMNO in every way, then our former UMNO members would come back and join as members of the new party. If we were seen to be something else, they might hold back.

The new party was open to everybody, even those who had stood against me. I always believed that I had no right to stop anyone from serving the party simply because they chose not to side with me. So I admitted into UMNO Baru everyone who wanted to join, including those who had thrown their lot with Team B—among them Tan Sri Syed Hamid Albar, Abdul Kadir Sheikh Fadzir and Tun Abdullah. After some hesitation, Tun Abdullah was among the first to apply to join UMNO Baru. I thought he had behaved in the most peculiar way during the contest between Team A and Team B. He had been a second-tier, Team B leader and was widely regarded as Tun Musa’s follower. I remember that at one point, I campaigned in Tun Abdullah’s constituency of Kepala Batas in Penang. He chose to share the platform with me that day and managed to give a speech that favoured neither team. It made me wonder which side he was on. I suppose he was hedging, in case I won.

Not everyone in Team B, however, wanted to join UMNO Baru. Tengku Razaleigh went on to form a new party called Semangat 46 (Spirit of 46), recalling the year that UMNO was established. Tun Musa and Tun Abdullah stayed out. With his long political experience, Tengku Razaleigh knew that UMNO’s success was grounded in part upon its Malay support and its working coalition with MCA and MIC via the Alliance and the Barisan Nasional. He decided to adopt the same approach—he knew that so long as the various Opposition parties contested against each other, the split in the votes of those against the Barisan Nasional would always result in the Barisan Nasional winning.

He therefore persuaded PAS and DAP to cooperate with his party and field only one Opposition candidate against the Barisan Nasional in every constituency. They would share the constituencies between them just as the Barisan Nasional did, and would support one another’s candidates. But PAS supporters found supporting DAP anathema while the DAP found PAS repugnant. Still, PAS and Semangat 46 supporters cooperated quite well. The main beneficiary of their cooperation, however, was PAS—Semangat 46 won very few seats and it quickly became clear that the Opposition coalition benefited PAS mainly through Semangat 46 votes. DAP also gained from Semangat 46 support, but PAS and DAP votes were insufficient to help Semangat 46 in contests against UMNO candidates.

After two general elections, Semangat 46 leaders realised that they were not getting anywhere through their pact with PAS and DAP. Several of its members who still had friends in UMNO made the first move to get Semangat 46 back in the UMNO fold. In this way, members did not need to endure the isolation and anxiety of making an individual choice. I thought it was a good idea, and a timely one too. Splintering the party had weakened UMNO and accepting people back would be good for it. I was willing to let people who had opposed me to come back into UMNO, and even gave them positions within the party. I realised that each had his own following and it was important that they bring their followers back with them. One could only do so by giving them face, by accepting them without recrimination or humiliating them.

That was my view, but not everyone in UMNO felt the same way. Many were still angry and the idea that we should re-admit a group that had caused so much trouble and turned against the party was distasteful to many UMNO Baru leaders and members. A few felt they could never work with Semangat 46, especially as the re-admission of a former Semangat 46 leader to an UMNO division could cause insecurity for that division leader. But I had to look at the big picture. Splinter groups could do a lot of damage in constituencies where the margins were very narrow. Even small numbers could make a big difference in an election. I could never forget that I had lost in 1969 because, though few in number, local MCA members refused to vote for me and voted instead for PAS.

The return of Semangat 46 to UMNO, however, still did not give Barisan Nasional victory in Kelantan in the 1999 General Election. PAS is a tough adversary to dislodge. How I feel about some of their leaders is one matter but I respect and admire the tenacity of their rank and file. Their followers support the party and its candidates because of an intense personal commitment, not because they receive lavish material rewards. It is a pity, though, that their trusting loyalty is so blindly and uncritically given. Working out how to sever that bond has always been one of UMNO’s biggest political challenges.

Tengku Razaleigh and I spoke together in a public rally in Kelantan as a demonstration of reconciliation on 3 October 1996. Seven years after Semangat 46 was formed, we now spoke of the need for Malay unity and to strengthen UMNO, and of the importance of our now working together towards that objective. The month before that, Semangat 46’s Supreme Council had decided that the party would be dissolved and that its 400,000 members would join UMNO. I knew there would be problems in the transition process and that many would find it difficult to forget what had been said at the height of the Team A-Team B split. These included Tengku Razaleigh’s allegations that we had cheated our way to victory in the 1987 party elections.

But it was worth having them come back. I knew I could work with them, as I could with anyone who had something to contribute to the party. I even considered re-appointing Tengku Razaleigh to the Cabinet, but after he gave an interview to the 
Far Eastern Economic Review
 magazine that was very critical of me and the Government, I had to change my mind. Past disloyalty could be understood, forgiven and overlooked, but not a continuing lack of loyalty and discretion. Had Tengku Razaleigh been more patient, he would probably have taken Tun Musa’s place as Deputy Prime Minister and eventually become Prime Minister.

As for Tun Musa, I held no animosity towards my former deputy. Even after he left UMNO I treated him well and appointed him to several posts, including Malaysia’s Special Envoy to the United Nations with Ministerial rank in 1990 and later as Chairman of the Malaysian Human Rights Commission in 1999. I did not see any reason to deny him a role in the Government. After the failure of Team B, Tun Musa distanced himself from both sides and remained independent. But I saw his decision not to join Semangat 46 as a signal that he did not want to be in opposition to UMNO.

When Team B members joined UMNO Baru they were even offered the chance to return to their seats on the party’s Supreme Council. Some critics said this was a calculated move on my part to soften my tough and unyielding image. That was of no concern to me—I was, I thought, as tough as ever. But when I believe an action may be good for the party, I will not hesitate to take it.

At heart, former Team B members were all really UMNO people. That was the truth behind the lifting of the ban against their rejoining the party. We had been separated from one another by our personal loyalties to different individuals, but our driving political objectives were the same. It was important to give a place to everyone who supported UMNO’s struggle and principles.

I have always maintained that UMNO belonged to all Malays, and that any Malay who subscribed to the party’s objectives has a right to join. From its inception UMNO Baru thrived; it was further strengthened when most of those members who briefly defected to Semangat 46 returned to their political home.