Malaysian politics have been dominated by the United Malay National Organization (UMNO), which was formed to represent and protect the rights of Malaysia’s indigenous Malay community. Together with its junior coalition partners, MCA (the Malaysian Chinese Association) and MIC (the Malaysian Indian Congress), UMNO-led coalitions, known as the Alliance until 1973 and BN since then, have never held fewer than 60% of parliamentary seats. The image of UMNO had badly tarnished since 2008 during the result of 12th general election (GE12) on 8 March 2008 when the four states Penang, Selangor, Kedah and Kelantan loses to the opposition and lost the two-third majority in the parliament. This drastic image tarnished continue increase in 13th General Election (GE 13) on 5 May 2013 when UMNO, the core party of BN lost by popular vote to the opposition parties. The results of the 13th general election marked a political phenomenon which saw BN lead by UMNO "losing victory" while the PR "won in defeat". This study aims to understand the application of Image Repair Theory to the image of UMNO as proposed by Malaysian political scholars.
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