History
Lee was the first to use the phrase "ultras" in 1964, when he publicly demanded that UMNO's leadership "Smack down their ultras." This was barely a year after Singapore had merged with Malaya, Sabah, and Sarawak to form a united Malaysia, and this profoundly troubled the UMNO leadership. It is not clear where Lee got the idea of labeling Malay chauvinists as "ultras", but it is possible that he may have obtained it from a student's Ph.D. thesis. In 1960, Lee served on a three-man panel that evaluated Gordon Paul Means' Ph.D. thesis, entitled "Malayan Government and Politics in Transition". On one page of his copy of the manuscript, Lee had reportedly underlined in thick pencil the word "ultra" and placed an exclamation mark over it.
Read more about this topic: Ultra (Malaysia)
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