Tradition, UMNO and political succession in Malaysia

ABSTRACT Leaders of the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), Malaysia's ruling party, invented 'Malay tradition' for the purpose of maintaining control not only over the domestic political process, but also in their own ranks. Yet, this did not deter challenges to the leadership which were also legitimised on the basis of tradition. In this regard, the rhetoric of tradition also functioned as a barometer assessing the stakes and the levels of support for the contestants. When the stakes of political contestation became extraordinarily high, the major protagonists were quite willing to depart from tradition to determine outcomes. Realising its instrumental worth, the UMNO elites manufactured tradition to legitimise deviations from established norms. But in the process of reinventing the wheel, the leaders of UMNO inadvertently contributed to the construction of ethnic identity.