She has a title and a famous father, but among Asia's political princesses Datin Paduka Marina Mahathir is something of a rebel.

Unlike half a dozen dutiful daughters from Pakistan to the Philippines, Marina - as she likes to be called - has not followed an illustrious male ancestor into power.

Instead, she appears to have inherited the maverick gene from her father Mahathir Mohamad, formerly one of Asia's most controversial leaders, and plays the role of liberal gadfly to Malaysia's conservative political and social establishment.

The title she bears - along the lines of "Dame" in Britain, Malaysia's former colonial power - was bestowed not for her political background but for her voluntary work, including the presidency of the Malaysian AIDS Council where she has become the voice of the victims.

Marina's liberal streak emerges in her column in a major English-language newspaper where she campaigns for progressive causes sometimes opposed by her father and in a weekly television programme promoting women's rights.

On a continent where demure women are prized, and particularly in this mainly Muslim nation, Marina's opinions are a blast of liberal modernity.

One example is her attitude towards censorship in Malaysia, which was run by her father for 22 years until he retired as prime minister in October 2003. The government regularly bans books, movies and television shows for their political, religious or sexual content.

"Censorship is one of my favourite subjects because apart from pornography and violence I don't think anything should be censored," she wrote in her book "In Liberal Doses", a collection of newspaper columns published during her father's tenure.

"The very idea that some unknown civil servants should decide (what we should or should not see and hear), based on some arbitrary values, really gets my goat."