Umno then and now
The road to nationhood has not been an easy journey. Surprises and disappointments, tension and crisis, have marred the way.
Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah
Umno is a party with great deeds to its name.
Umno was founded in 1946 to defend the rights of the Malays and the Rulers. It formed an alliance to unite the people of Malaya in working out and achieving our independence in 1957. In 1963, Umno’s leader, Al-marhum Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra Al-Haj, worked out an even bolder vision, the formation of Malaysia, which on Sept 16, he proclaimed, had been “decided upon after much care and thought,” the fruit of “mutual consent by debate and discussion, inquiries and elections”
He declared his pride in the way “we have created Malaysia through friendly argument and compromise. The spirit of co-operation and concord is living proof of the desire we share for a common destiny.” This spirit he called the very “basis of Malaysia” and its “augury for the future.”
Malaya and Malaysia were achievements of vision executed by patient deliberation. Umno’s leadership articulated that vision, won others over to it, and helped forge the constitutional underpinnings for a new nation in negotiations over many months. “Step by step the concept came to life.” Constitutional discussions were pursued in the teeth of an internal communist insurgency, violent confrontation with neighbouring countries determined to frustrate the union, and under the cloud of the Cold War.
Nevertheless, Tunku said, we succeeded “because the ideal of Malaysia caught the imagination of all the peoples concerned.”
