Mahathir's 100 Years In Malaysia

On July 10, 2025, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad turned 100. His longevity ensures that he towers over Malaysia’s modern history, but his centennial is less a celebration than a reckoning. Mahathir was the man who built modern Malaysia’s skyline and its economic base, yet he also entrenched the racialised politics and institutional weaknesses that continue to hold the country back. His story is not just one of nation-building, but of how power wielded too long and too tightly corrodes the very foundations it claims to protect. 

Mahathir’s first premiership, from 1981 to 2003, is remembered for industrialisation, foreign investment, and ambitious megaprojects. Malaysia enjoyed years of strong growth, and his decision to defy the IMF during the 1997–98 financial crisis gave him international notoriety. But this achievement was inseparable from a political order that he personalised and bent to his will. His economic bargain was built on the expansion of the New Economic Policy, embedding Malay privileges across education, business and the civil service. This created a new Malay middle class, but also entrenched dependency, blunted competitiveness, and hardened identity politics into permanent fault lines.

At the core of this bargain was Mahathir’s own worldview, set out in The Malay Dilemma (1970). Instead of rejecting colonial stereotypes about Malays, he repackaged them as a call for state intervention. Though he later softened his more extreme claims, the logic—that Malays required quotas and protection—remained central to his policies. The result was a system that uplifted some but institutionalised entitlement, leaving a legacy of division and mediocrity that still shapes Malaysian politics today.

Mahathir’s willingness to centralise power further warped the political system. The 1987 Operation Lalang crackdown, which saw over 100 detained, and the 1988 judicial crisis, which destroyed the independence of the courts, marked turning points in Malaysia’s democratic decline. Both were justified as necessary for order and stability, but they left deep institutional scars. Mahathir proved adept at delivering growth, but his style hollowed out the checks and balances that might have safeguarded Malaysia against the excesses of later leaders.

His return in 2018 at age 92 was a political masterstroke, but also a final act of hubris. By uniting a fragmented opposition, he toppled the Barisan Nasional government and rode the wave of public anger over 1MDB. For a moment, he reinvented himself as a reformist saviour. Yet his instinct remained to concentrate power in his own hands, illustrated by his unilateral appointment of Latheefa Koya to lead the anti-graft commission. Within two years, the coalition collapsed, and Mahathir resigned in the belief that he would be recalled. This time, the country moved on without him. 

His final years in electoral politics ended in humiliation. In the 2022 general election, Mahathir’s party Pejuang was wiped out and he lost his own seat in Langkawi, forfeiting his deposit. It was an extraordinary fall for a man who once bestrode Malaysian politics like a colossus. Yet even out of office, he remains locked in battle with his onetime protégé and now nemesis, Anwar Ibrahim. The recent controversy over his children’s declared wealth, and his denunciation of Anwar as “the greatest liar,” underline how Mahathir continues to fight old wars rather than confront the legacies of his own system.

The paradox of Mahathir is stark. He scolds Malays for complacency even as he built the very structures that fostered dependency. He rails against corruption yet presided over the creation of a political–business nexus that paved the way for scandals like 1MDB. He mocks global autocrats while embodying authoritarian instincts at home. He jokes about being a “dictator who resigned twice,” but the truth is that he never envisioned a Malaysia in which he was not indispensable.

At 100, Mahathir remains both the builder and the divider. He modernised Malaysia, lifted millions out of poverty, and gave the nation international visibility. But he also left behind a brittle political culture where identity trumps ideas, patronage outpaces merit, and institutions serve personalities rather than principles. His career offers not just inspiration but a warning: bold leadership without strong institutions breeds dependency, corruption, and division.

The challenge for Malaysia now is to escape Mahathir’s long shadow. It must preserve ambition for growth while dismantling the structures of racial entitlement and political patronage that he entrenched. It must move from protectionism to competitiveness, from personalised rule to institutional integrity. Mahathir’s centenary should be remembered less as a celebration of his power than as a reminder of the price Malaysia has paid for it.