After closing the last page on Barry Wain's Malaysian Maverick: Mahathir Mohamad in Turbulent Times, I can understand why this book is banned in Malaysia. It is an utterly frank expose of the Mahathirian regime in all its foulness.

While paying tribute to Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s drive and determination to modernise the country and his success in doing so, the author is unsparing in describing his faults. The ex-PM was not himself corrupt but used patronage and licensed corruption as a means of holding on to power.

Thus, he was dismissive of the enormous multi-billion ringgit financial scandals that rocked the economy during his rule, refusing calls for investigations and bringing no one to book. His failure allowed Umno party elections to be monetised, with vote-buying seen as an investment to the future lucre associated with each contested position in terms of government contracts, kickbacks and outright theft.

Mahathir's demolishment of the country's democratic institutions to concentrate power in the hands of the executive is well-documented, including his liberal use of the ISA, attacks on media freedom, destruction of the independence of the judiciary, Attorney General's Chambers and Election Commission, and curtailment of the sultans' reserve powers.

Towards the end, he was so singularly powerful that he could marshall all his corrupt resources to wreak the most awful vendetta against the fallen Anwar Ibrahim.

One feels that Wain does not intentionally seek to blacken Mahathir; the author merely described what he observed in unemotional prose. He is as even-handed as he can be.

His portrait of Mahathir is of a man at the cusp of Malaysian history; a towering giant who had the dynamism, character and force of personality to become truly the ‘Maker of Malaysia’ but, instead, seriously abused his powers, using means to justify ends. Yet, this man appears to admit to no mistake other than his clearly unworkable promotion of Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.

The book is also an indictment of the current depraved state of Umno, BN and the federal government. The reader naturally reaches the conclusion that change is imperative but change will be resisted by the afore-mentioned including the banning of this eye-opening book.

It is a measure of how much oppression there is to freedom of expression and publication in the country that Malaysians require a foreigner to explain Malaysia to them. Finally, there can be no better recommendation for this astonishing book than the fact that it is banned by the Malaysian government.