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After the ethnic violence following the worst defeat for the Alliance at the 1969 general elections, Tunku Abdul Rahman retired from office and the prime ministership passed to Tun Abdul Razak in 1970.

It was the passing of an era which saw the control of the ruling party Umno shift from the old-style English-educated Malay aristocracy to the emergent and ambitious new Malay capitalist class.

Razak is credited with initiating much of the racial restructuring of the Malaysian economy under the New Economic Policy. He died in 1976 and his successor was Hussein Onn, son of Umno's founder Onn Jaafar. The new prime minister's first test was to confront Harun Idris, the powerful chief minister of Selangor, who represented an increasingly militant communal wing in Umno.

Harun's activities became so blatant that in 1975, the prime minister decided to press charges of corruption against him. He was sentenced to six years' imprisonment on charges of corruption and forgery in 1978 but still managed to win a seat in the Umno supreme council that same year. He was released from prison in 1981.