Abdul Razak Hussein
However, Asri's most radical change was still to come. In January 1972, he announced that PAS would be joining the Alliance coalition (which would soon rebrand itself as Barisan Nasional) as a junior partner to its main rival UMNO. The move was controversial within PAS, and some of its members and senior leaders either left the party or were purged by Asri. Asri's principal justification for joining UMNO in a coalition government was that after the 1969 race riots, Malay unity was paramount, and that this required a partnership between the country's two ethnic-Malay political parties. Asri himself was given a ministerial position in the cabinet of prime minister Abdul Razak Hussein.