The establishment tried its utmost to silence the local media, but it could not prevent a UK-based journalist from producing breaking stories on the 1MDB mega scandal, which culminated in the fall of BN and the eventual incarceration of Najib Abdul Razak.

Six years after that watershed election, the founder and editor of Sarawak Report Clare Rewcastle-Brown rued that she could end up spending a longer time in a Malaysian prison compared to the former prime minister.

“It is indeed a wry thought,” she told Malaysiakini in reference to her two-year jail sentence, which...