stance" and not having a campaign strategy. Meanwhile, Mahathir had maintained Razaleigh as Finance Minister until he was made the Minister of International Trade and Industry in a 1984 cabinet reshuffle. Exit from UMNO and formation of Semangat 46 Tengku Razaleigh challenged Dr. Mahathir in the 1987 UMNO leadership election, teaming up with former Deputy Prime Minister Musa Hitam, who had in the year prior resigned from Dr. Mahathir's cabinet owing to some conflict with the Prime Minister. Mahathir's then Deputy Prime Minister, Ghafar Baba, contested against Musa for the Deputy Presidency. This led to UMNO being split into two camps, i.e. "Team A" and "Team B" with Dr. Mahathir and Razaleigh as leaders of the respective camps. Dr. Mahathir managed to retain his party president position by a mere 43 votes and Musa lost by 40 votes. It is worth noting that of the two living former Prime Ministers at the time, Tunku Abdul Rahman and Tun Hussein Onn, both had thrown their support behind Razaleigh. The election was held on a Friday, and coinciding with the Friday prayers, it is alleged that many used this opportunity to "buy" votes from delegates in order to have them cast a vote for their leader. There were many who changed camps at the last minute, including Najib Razak who was then the leader of UMNO's Youth Wing, who ended up endorsing Dr. Mahathir. Najib would come to express regret at his decision 30 years later. It has also been alleged by Razaleigh's camp that while the votes were being counted and Razaleigh was leading, a "black-out" had suddenly occurred whereby the room lost electricity. This was especially curious as the rooms adjacent to where the votes were being counted did not experience the same. After the electric power was back on, Razaleigh's lead was slowly erased and Dr. Mahathir was eventually declared the winner. This left Razaleigh and his Team B supporters unsatisfied. A few Team B leaders had claimed many party delegates were improperly elected. They eventually took UMNO to court and filed suit to overturn the election after finding discrepancies throughout the voting process. The courts found that some of the delegates that voted were ineligible and UMNO was thus declared illegal on technical grounds in 1988. Despite Dr. Mahathir's camp blaming Razaleigh for UMNO being declared an unlawful party although Razaleigh was not among the twelve plaintiffs, he