The Undang Yang Empat Have a Legitimacy Problem — and It Is Not Going Away

Apr 26, 2026

On 19 April 2026, four men made a declaration that purported to remove a sitting ruler. They named no specific offence. They followed no constitutional process. They had no Ibu Soko mandate. And one of them had already been stripped of his own position two days earlier.

Whatever happens next in this crisis, the Undang Yang Empat have a problem that will not resolve itself when the crisis does.

They have a legitimacy problem. And legitimacy, once lost, is the hardest thing in the world to rebuild.

What Legitimacy Actually Means

In Adat Perpatih, legitimacy is not a legal technicality. It is not a signature on a document or a gazette entry. It is something deeper and more fundamental — it is the consent, trust and recognition of the people and the traditional structures that give a position its meaning.

The Undang Yang Empat derive their authority not from themselves but from the system around them From the Ibu Soko who legitimises their positions, from the Lembaga and Buapak who sit below them, from the anak buah whose lives and lands they are entrusted to govern, and from the Yang di-Pertuan Besar above them whose authority they affirm through their presence and loyalty.

Strip away any one of those relationships and the authority of the Undang becomes hollow — a title without substance, a position without meaning.

Unfortunately, the events of April 2026 strained all of them simultaneously.

What They Have Lost

They lost the Ibu Soko.

The Ibu Soko Klana Hulu, the matriarchal gatekeeper of legitimacy in Sungei Ujong, explicitly stated she never gave Mubarak a mandate to make the declaration. The Ibu Soko and Anak Waris of all four Luak subsequently submitted a formal memorandum of support for Tuanku Muhriz. In a system where the Ibu Soko’s blessing is constitutionally required for any major adat action, this is a major setback and a foundational withdrawal of legitimacy.

They lost the legal community.

Former Court of Appeal judge Datuk Seri Mohd Hishamudin Yunus, himself an anak Negeri Sembilan whose great-great-grandfather was the Undang of Johol, published a devastating three-point demolition of the declaration in The Edge. Senior constitutional lawyer Malik Imtiaz Sarwar concluded in Free Malaysia Today that “there is in reality no constitutional crisis.” The weight of serious legal opinion is firmly against them.

They lost the state government.

The Menteri Besar was unequivocal from the first hour. The state government does not recognise, does not accept, and does not intend to act upon the declaration. Without the MB’s cooperation, the declaration cannot be gazetted. Without gazettal, it has no legal force. The Undang have a proclamation that the government simply refuses to implement.

They lost the public.

Most damagingly of all, they lost the people. Social media, which in any previous era would have been managed through official channels and editorial caution, gave Malaysians an unfiltered view of what happened. And what they saw was a sacked Undang reading a Facebook Live declaration against a ruler without naming a single specific offence. This did not look like the principled exercise of constitutional authority. It looked, as one anak nogori put it simply, like gilo koso. Translation: Mad for power.

The Specific Problem of Each Undang

Datuk Mubarak Dohak faces the most acute legitimacy crisis of the four. He was already removed from his position before he signed the declaration. His participation in a constitutional act after his own removal makes every subsequent action legally and customarily void. He cannot rebuild legitimacy because he no longer holds the position from which legitimacy flows.

Datuk Maarof Mat Rashad (the Undang of Jelebu) faces questions that go beyond this crisis. Public SSM records and a letter on official Balai Undang letterhead raise serious questions about the granting of rare earth mining rights to a company in which he subsequently became a shareholder, before quietly exiting one month before the crisis. These questions have not been answered. They will not simply disappear.

Datuk Muhammed Abdullah (the Undang of Johol) has been associated with the financial controversy surrounding the two dismissed Dato’-Dato’ Lembaga who allegedly formed an unauthorised council and received RM160,000 from the Negeri Sembilan Museum Board. His credibility is entangled in a dispute that the courts and SPRM may yet be asked to examine.

Datuk Abdul Rahim Yasin (the Undang of Rembau) was installed in September 2024, barely seven months before signing the declaration. He is the newest, most junior and least experienced of the four. Yet he signed a document purporting to remove a ruler who has reigned for 17 years. The communities of Rembau, whose adat values and oral traditions run deep, will be asking for a very long time why their Undang made this choice.

Can Legitimacy Be Rebuilt?

In theory, yes. In practice, it would require something that none of the four Undang have shown any inclination toward: acknowledgement.

Legitimacy in Adat Perpatih is rebuilt through the same mechanism by which it is established — muafakat. Open deliberation. Honest engagement. The willingness to sit with the people below you, the Ibu Soko beside you, and the ruler above you, and to work through disagreement within the framework of the system rather than around it.

That would require the Undang to admit that the process they followed was wrong, even if they maintain that their underlying grievances were legitimate. It would require them to submit to the constitutional framework rather than claiming to stand above it. It would require patience, humility and the kind of long-term thinking that the events of April 2026 suggest is in short supply.

None of that appears imminent.

The Deeper Question

The legitimacy problem of the Undang Yang Empat raises a question that goes beyond this particular crisis: what happens to an institution when it is seen to act against the very principles that give it meaning?

The Undang Yang Empat exist, constitutionally and customarily, to be the guardians of Negeri Sembilan’s unique adat system. They are the kingmakers — the four men whose collective wisdom is supposed to ensure that the Yang di-Pertuan Besar is chosen and held accountable in accordance with centuries of tradition.

When those four men are seen to have acted without the Ibu Soko’s mandate, without proper process, without naming a single specific offence, and in the case of one of them without even holding a valid position, the institution itself is damaged. Not just the individuals within it, but the office they hold.

Future Undang will inherit that damage. Future decisions by the Undang Yang Empat will be scrutinised more harshly because of what happened in April 2026. The trust deficit will outlast the individuals who created it.

What Negeri Sembilan Needs Now

Negeri Sembilan’s adat system is genuinely extraordinary. It is one of the few matrilineal royal systems in the world. It has survived for centuries precisely because it balances power between the ruler, the traditional chiefs and the people in a way that no single party can dominate.

That balance is what was damaged in April 2026.

Restoring it requires more than a resolution of the immediate constitutional dispute. It requires the Undang, whoever they are, now and in the future, to recommit to the principles that give their position meaning. Transparency. Process. Muafakat. Accountability.

Adat bukan hak mutlak. Adat adalah amanah.

Adat is not an absolute right. Adat is a trust.

The Undang Yang Empat have a legitimacy problem. It is not going away.

The question is whether they — and the institution they represent — have the wisdom to understand why.