Soon after Malaysia was formed, alarmed by Indonesia's confrontation and rebel activities in the Borneo territories, the central parliament in Kuala Lumpur passed legislation which required all youth between the age of 18 and 25 to register for National Service. The left-wingers regarded this action as a government move "to counter the left-wing movement" However, within the left-wing camp, there were two different strategies to campaign against the National Service scheme supported by two schools led respectively by Chen Hock Wah, who was a member of the CPM and Lee Siew Choh, who was Chairman of Barisan. Chen Hock Wah proposed a two-step policy called "Principled Registration" or "Registration under Protest". The first step was not to stop persons affected being registered. The second step was to tell the persons affected not to present themselves for rollcall if they were actually mobilised for active service after registration. On the other hand, the camp led by Lee Siew Choh advocated a boycott of the law and proposed affected persons should not even register in the first place. A great quarrel broke out in Barisan and Chen's strategy obtained majority support. Finally, Lee Siew Choh, together with seven other founding members resigned from the party attributing his resignation to the difference between him and other leaders. The party was split wide open, though Lee was persuaded to resume his chairmanship of Barisan on 9 March 1965.