Every October, a small number of Malaysians mark an anniversary that the country’s official histories prefer to skip over. Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad is now 101, and at this year’s National Day celebrations he appeared at Dataran Putrajaya in an electric wheelchair. He is often honoured as the architect of modern Malaysia, but that tribute leaves out how much of the country’s institutional damage traces back to him. Start with 1987. That year, Mahathir’s grip on UMNO was weaker than it had ever been. At the party’s April general assembly, challenger Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah won 718 votes to Mahathir’s 761 for the presidency, and the result was challenged in court. Within months, Mahathir and the police launched a crackdown on 27 October 1987, which he said was needed to calm racial tension that had become dangerous. During Ops Lalang, 106 people were held without trial under the Internal Security Act, among them NGO activists, opposition politicians, academics, students, artists and sc...