How Dr Mahathir’s legacy continues to imperil Malaysia’s future

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PARADISE LOST: Mahathir & The End of Hope takes a critical look at Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s role in Malaysia’s political evolution and his ultimately destructive legacy of corruption, racism and religious extremism. He inherited a nation pregnant with promise and left it mired in division, uncertainty and instability, a grand kleptopia, a terrible kakistocracy. It also examines the role Mahathir played in Pakatan Harapan’s stunning 2018 electoral victory and his subsequent betrayal of the coalition he was entrusted to lead. The end result is a nation in deep crisis, adrift in a sea of uncertainty, unable to come to terms with its past, unwilling to make the compromises necessary for its future.

Written by a former Malaysian ambassador, Paradise Lost makes for sober reading. Intensely provocative, it challenges long-established shibboleths, spotlights the dangers now confronting the nation and argues that Malaysia’s only hope for redemption lies in embracing and harnessing its unique multicultural identity.

Release date 9th September 2021. Now available for pre-order.


Click Here To Pre-order!

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PETALING JAYA: Brilliant, multi-talented, inquisitive were some of the adjectives a former Malaysian diplomat uses to describe Dr Mahathir Mohamad. But he also played racist games, writes Dennis Ignatius.

In the preface to his book Paradise Lost: Mahathir and the End of Hope, Ignatius said he spent much time with the then prime minister in the course of his long career in the foreign service.

“I met many world leaders and I can honestly say that Mahathir often stood head and shoulders above them all. As a foreign service officer, one could not ask for more in a leader.”

But Mahathir was a man of many sides, Ignatius said. The side that dismayed him the most was Mahathir’s race-based vision for Malaysia.

However, the turning point for Ignatius came with Mahathir’s “unacceptable” treatment of his then deputy Anwar Ibrahim.


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PETALING JAYA: The rot in the civil service began during Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s first stint as prime minister and has since become a “bloated and increasingly corrupt” entity, a former diplomat said.

In his new book, Paradise Lost: Mahathir & The End of Hope, Dennis Ignatius claimed the former prime minister disdained the idea of independent-minded officials who provided apolitical service.

He alleged that Mahathir craved a more subservient bureaucracy that was “ready to do his bidding” and those who got in his way were removed.

Blind loyalty, he noted, became the most important requirement for career advancement.

Ignatius said Mahathir’s successors continued with such a policy.

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