INTERVIEW | Increasingly disillusioned by its communalism, Umno founder Onn Jaafar left the party in 1951 after his call for it be opened to all races went unheard.

He formed the multiracial Independence of Malaya Party that same year. But the party was shortlived – it was dissolved soon after it won just one seat in the 1952 Kuala Lumpur municipal election.

In the nearly seven decades since, Umno has remained a Malay-only party, but the idea of opening up its membership to the country’s other ethnic communities re-emerged after its first-ever federal electoral defeat in the May 9 polls...