M FOR MALAYSIA

On May 9 last year, Malaysian voters ousted their government for the first time in six decades after former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad came out of retirement to rally opposition against the corruption-tainted rule of Najib Razak. Three women captured all the drama of the historic campaign in a feature documentary

By Lily Ong.

Division is a recurring theme in history, and so it has been for Malaysia. For the six decades since the country won independence, the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition maintained its grip on power through racial campaigning that favoured the dominant party of the coalition, the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO). In 2015, news broke that the personal bank accounts of the then Prime Minister, Najib Razak, had received suspicious deposits of 2.6 billion ringgit (more than US$620 million). A year later, the Wall Street Journal ran an exposé on the state-owned 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) fund, exposing suspicious financial transactions and uncovering evidence of money laundering, fraud and theft on a grand scale. A lawsuit filed by the US Department of Justice alleged that at least US$3.5 billion had been stolen…

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Tatler Hong Kong (Digital) - 1 Issue, October 2019

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