UMNO Team A vs Team B and deregistration (1987-1988)
In 1987 the country's largest party split into two factions over its presidency, and within ten months a court ruling on unregistered branches ended the original UMNO's legal existence and produced two new parties in its place.
what happened
UMNO's party elections on 24 April 1987 were the closest in its history. Two organised camps contested them: Team A, around party president and Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, and Team B, led by Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah together with former Deputy Prime Minister Musa Hitam. Mahathir kept the presidency by 43 votes, on figures usually given as 761 to 718. A margin that narrow put the eligibility of individual delegates at the centre of what followed.
Eleven party members took the dispute to court, asking the High Court to declare the election null and void. Their case rested on the registration of branches: delegates had been sent by branches that were not approved or registered with the Registrar of Societies, and the agreed facts listed 30 such branches. Because the Societies Act treats a society with unapproved branches as unlawful, that point carried consequences well beyond the count. On 4 February 1988 Justice Harun M Hashim did not rule on whether the election had been properly conducted. He held instead that, because of those unregistered branches, UMNO itself had been an unlawful society at the time of the assembly, and that its members could not acquire rights founded on what was unlawful; the court would therefore not lend its aid to the reliefs they sought. He dismissed their claim, saying on the day that his hands were tied because Parliament had already made the decision through the Act.
The appeal never produced a decision. Lord President Salleh Abas directed that nine judges hear it and a date of 13 June 1988 was fixed. He was suspended with effect from 26 May 1988, the acting Lord President vacated the hearing date, and no appellate court ever ruled on the validity of the 1987 party election. His removal from office came later, in August 1988, after a tribunal; both steps belong to the wider 1988 judicial crisis, which is treated on its own page.
The practical result was two parties where there had been one. Mahathir registered UMNO Baru in February 1988, drawing its leadership from his own faction and leaving Team B figures outside it. Tengku Razaleigh organised Parti Melayu Semangat 46, named for UMNO's founding year, which he has said was intended to keep former UMNO members together rather than see them scatter. It was registered in 1989 and contested the 1990 general election before dissolving in the mid-1990s.
What the deregistration meant is still argued over. Razaleigh's position, which he has stated repeatedly and most recently in Parliament in 2021, is that the old party had committed no offence, that the Registrar had no power to deregister it, and that the ruling was made outside the court's jurisdiction; he has also said the 1988 decision favoured the incumbent leadership. The other side of that argument is harder to set out fairly, because it is largely absent from the record: Mahathir did not appeal and registered a new party instead, but no contemporaneous statement by him or another Team A leader explaining that choice has been located for this page, and his one later comment on the episode — that the reasons for the deregistration "were hardly serious" — does not defend the ruling either. Readers should treat the silence as a gap rather than as agreement. Because the appeal was never heard, no court ever chose between them, and this page does not either.
the working
What the sources say
established
UMNO held its 38th general assembly and triennial party elections on 24 April 1987, described in contemporary and retrospective accounts as the most closely fought internal contest in the party's history to that point.
established
The contest pitted the faction around incumbent party president and Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, commonly called Team A, against a faction led by Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah and former Deputy Prime Minister Musa Hitam, commonly called Team B.
established
Mahathir was returned as party president by a margin of 43 votes over Tengku Razaleigh; the figures usually reported are 761 votes to 718.
George Seah · The 'Battle Royal': The UMNO Elections of 1987
established
Eleven UMNO members, known afterwards as the "UMNO 11," sued in the High Court seeking a declaration that the April 1987 party election was unconstitutional, illegal and null and void.
established
The plaintiffs' central complaint was that delegates sent by branches not approved or registered with the Registrar of Societies had voted; the agreed facts before the court listed 30 unapproved branches across four divisions and others.
contested
Under UMNO's constitution as described by Supreme Court judge George Seah, a branch could elect up to five delegates and a division up to ten; Seah wrote that on that basis, had the delegates from the 30 unapproved branches been excluded, "the outcome would have been very close due to the narrow margin of the votes between the winner and loser." This is Seah's own arithmetic, not a finding of the court, and the court never tested it.
adjudicated
On 4 February 1988 High Court judge Harun M Hashim held that UMNO was an unlawful society under the Societies Act at the time of the 24 April 1987 assembly, because of those unregistered branches. He ruled that the UMNO 11, "as members of UMNO, cannot acquire any right which is founded upon that which is unlawful," that the court "will therefore not lend its aid to the reliefs sought by the Plaintiffs," that it was accordingly unnecessary to deal with the other issues, and he dismissed the plaintiffs' claim. The unlawful-society finding was his reasoning for refusing relief, not relief granted to the plaintiffs.
established
Reporting on the day of the judgment quoted Harun saying that his hands were tied because "Parliament has already made the decision" through the Societies Act, which deems an organisation unlawful if it has unapproved branches, and that "very sadly... I have to make a finding in law that at the material time, UMNO was an unlawful society," and "what happened in 1987 was a nullity." The same report recorded that the plaintiffs' own lawyers had urged him not to outlaw UMNO as a whole because of the "drastic consequences."
established
Much of the detailed narrative of the appeal below comes from an account written in 2005 by George Seah, who was himself a Supreme Court judge at the time and was later removed in the 1988 judicial crisis; he is a participant in the events he describes, not a detached observer.
established
The UMNO 11 appealed to the Supreme Court; Lord President Salleh Abas directed that a nine-judge panel hear it, and on 24 May 1988 the registry was instructed to fix the hearing for 13 June 1988.
established
Salleh Abas was suspended from exercising the functions of his office with retrospective effect from 26 May 1988, which he reported on 27 May 1988; the Chief Justice of the High Court of Malaya, Abdul Hamid Omar, was appointed acting Lord President and vacated the 13 June hearing date, so no full appellate ruling on the validity of the 1987 party election was ever delivered.
established
Suspension and removal were separate steps taken months apart: the suspension took effect in late May 1988, and Salleh Abas was removed from the office of Lord President in August 1988, after an Article 125 tribunal. That whole sequence is covered on the separate page on the 1988 judicial crisis and is not re-argued here.
Panel of Eminent Persons · George Seah · Free Malaysia Today
established
After the ruling, Mahathir registered a new party, UMNO Baru (New UMNO), in February 1988; its membership and leadership were drawn from his own faction, and leading Team B figures were not admitted.
established
UMNO’s own timeline gives 13 February 1988 as UMNO Baru’s registration date, while contemporary reporting confirms that the party had been registered by 16 February; no Registrar of Societies register entry or Gazette notice was located to independently establish the entry date.
established
A 1993 Dewan Rakyat record says that applications using “UMNO 88” and “UMNO Malaysia” were rejected by the Registrar of Societies; other sources associate UMNO Malaysia with Tengku Razaleigh’s side, but no Registrar decision stating the grounds was located.
established
Tengku Razaleigh then organised a separate party, Parti Melayu Semangat 46, whose name refers to UMNO's founding year of 1946; Razaleigh has said it was set up so that former UMNO members who did not wish to join UMNO Baru would not be dispersed into other parties.
established
Semangat 46 was organised in 1988 and registered as a party in 1989, and Razaleigh contested the 1990 general election at its head before the party was dissolved and its members rejoined UMNO in the mid-1990s.
established
In the 1990 federal election, Semangat 46 won 8 of 180 Dewan Rakyat seats and Barisan Nasional won 127.
uncertain
No contemporaneous public statement by Mahathir explaining why the 1988 ruling was not appealed has been located; the documented sequence does not establish a motive for that decision.
No responsive contemporaneous statement located
uncertain
Legal and historical accounts discuss the branch-registration irregularities, but no independent scholarly study auditing the underlying branch-registration evidence and reaching findings beyond the competing political accounts has been located.
where accounts differ
The parts nobody agrees on
adjudicated
Whether the 1987 party election was tainted by improper voting was never resolved on the merits: the High Court declined to reach the other issues once it had found the society unlawful, dismissed the UMNO 11's claim, and the Supreme Court appeal was never heard.
contested
Seah's own criticism of the judgment is that "the High Court Judge purported to grant an Order which was not sought for either by the UMNO 11 or the Defendants." That is the view of a judge who was later removed in the 1988 judicial crisis, published seventeen years after the event; no appellate court tested it.
contested
Team B's position, as pleaded by the UMNO 11 and maintained since by Tengku Razaleigh, is that the 1987 result was invalid because ineligible branch delegates voted, and that a High Court or a Registrar could not lawfully treat an administrative failure to register branches as grounds to end the party's existence. Razaleigh has further said the 1988 outcome favoured the incumbent leadership. Speaking in Parliament in September 2021 he put it as: "The Registrar of Societies has no right or power to deregister the party, because it had not committed any offence," and said the ruling "was done outside legal jurisdiction" and the deregistration "was not done according to the Societies Act 1966."
established
What Mahathir's side did is on the record; what it argued at the time is not. Mahathir did not appeal the ruling and instead registered a new party within weeks. No contemporaneous 1988 statement by Mahathir or another Team A leader setting out a reasoned case for that course — as against appealing, or seeking to re-register the original UMNO — has been located for this page, and readers should not be given an inferred argument in place of one.
contested
Mahathir's own later characterisation of the deregistration does not defend it as sound law. Writing on his blog in December 2015, and quoted by Malaysiakini, he said: "Umno was declared illegal in my time. The reasons were hardly serious." He was making a point about the Societies Act in a different controversy, not revisiting 1988 on its merits.
contested
Whether the deregistration is best read as a narrow legal technicality about branch paperwork, or as an outcome that resolved a political contest, is disputed. Razaleigh characterises it as a decision the law did not permit; other accounts, including Aliran's, place it within a longer pattern of UMNO factional conflict rather than treating it as a purely administrative event. This page does not adjudicate between the readings.
uncertain
The exact registration date of UMNO Baru is reported inconsistently in secondary accounts, which variously give dates in mid and late February 1988. This page states only the month, because no Registrar of Societies record or gazette entry fixing the date has been located.
still being researched
- Whether a Registrar of Societies register entry or Gazette notice independently confirms UMNO Baru’s 13 February 1988 registration date.
- The exact date in 1989 on which Parti Melayu Semangat 46 was registered, from an official source.
- The law report citation and full reasoning of the 4 February 1988 High Court judgment; only summaries were located.
- The Registrar of Societies’ stated grounds for rejecting the “UMNO 88” and “UMNO Malaysia” applications.