Beyond Mahathir

A timely response to the retirement in October 2003 of Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, Beyond Mahathir poses vital questions about Malaysian politics after Mahathir in judicious ways. The author examines Malaysia's long-term social transformation, the global disruptions of July 1997 and 'September 11', key leaders' calculations of power, and the pitfalls of succession that intersected to produce the political dramas of Mahathir's final decade in power. Organizing arguments around the critical but unstable fortunes of a 30-year nationalist-capitalist project, the author brings to life Mahathir's predicaments, contradictions in Anwar Ibrahim's career, Reformasi's creative dissent, Parti Islam's religious dissidence, and the cultural imperative behind the rainbow coalition of the Alternative Front. Beyond Mahathir is an instructive guide to momentous events that revolved around competing conceptions of what the future portends or should portend for Malaysia, and the contested ways of getting there.