Though Malaysia's general election was not due until August 1991, rumours of the impending elections had circulated since 1989. The Malaysian public had expected the elections to be called after the euphoria over the country's medal haul at the Southeast Asia games in mid-1989, and later after the successful hosting of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Kuala Lumpur, during which the Prime Minister was given a great deal of exposure in the Malaysian media, receiving the leaders of the Commonwealth and being projected as a leader of world standing. Dr Mahathir himself constantly exhorted his party members and the component parties in the ruling coalition to be ready for the polls. However, 1989 went by without the elections.

Mahathir had not seen 1989 to be opportune, probably due to his assessment that his party might not have got the support that would be needed for a strong showing to take the wind out of the sail of his political rivals. This time around, he had to face an opponent of creditable standing in Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, an ex-colleague who had challenged him for the presidency of UMNO (United Malays National Organization). The acrimonious struggle for power in UMNO in 1987, from which Mahathir emerged the victor by a very slim majority of 43 votes out of the 1,479 votes cast in the UMNO elections, eventually led to a split in the party. When UMNO was declared an illegal organization under Malaysian law (in a court case mounted to challenge the validity of the 1987 UMNO elections and subsequently deregistered), Mahathir formed a new party, UMNO Baru, as a successor. Razaleigh, who was excluded, accused Mahathir of deliberately killing off the old UMNO out of political expediency to eliminate his rivals in the party. Razaleigh subsequently formed a rival party, Semangat '46 (The Spirit of '46), harking back to the year 1946 when the old UMNO was formed to “protect the survival” of the Malay race in the face of the “threat” arising from the British proposal to liberalize citizenship requirements for the non-Malay communities under the Malayan Union.