Opinions on the question of whether political and communal motives were involved in the Malaysian Government's decision, finally announced in 1971, abolish elected local government are sharply divided. On one side, Alvin Rabushka, in study published in 1970, has unequivocally maintained that the then Alliance Government refused restore elected local government primarily because it was motivated by the desire ensure Malay political hegemony in the face of non-Malay urban opposition.1 Writing in 1973, David Harner, in seeking explain the Federal Government's refusal allow elected local government in Kuala Lumpur, has argued that fear of the possibility of partisan actions of extreme nature, by some future council of Kuala Lumpur was important reason for the passage of the act. According Harner, if an extremist council with Communist or racist leanings was elected, it might deliberately seek embarrass the Federal Government by encouraging unruly demonstrators or enacting obstructive by-laws.2 Leaving aside Harner's less-than-objective treatment of the regime's opponents, it is clear that, like Rabushka, he sees political motives as highly significant in the abolition of elected local government. The Democratic Action Party, Malaysia's principal urban-based opposi tion party of the post-1969 period has regarded the abolition of local elected government as deliberate political ploy aimed at further increasing the power of the ruling party.3 Veteran opposition figure Dr Tan Chee Khoon branded the government's policy on local elections as a tragic story of broken promises and condemned them as taking Malaysia back to the conditions prevailing before World War II. Then we had nominated members serving in various town or sanitary boards. Then too, we were under the British Raj and it suited them have nominated council responsible no one and one which they could manipulate serve their imperial aims.4 However, in the only detailed study of the abolition of elected local government in Malaysia, completed early in 1973, Paul Tennant has rejected suggestions that the Alliance Government was motivated by communal and partisan considerations in its decision dismantle representative local government, concluding that: