Joseph Pairin Kitingan

Tan Sri Datuk Seri Panglima Joseph Pairin Kitingan (born 17 August 1940) is a Malaysian politician who served as the 7th Chief Minister of Sabah from April 1985 to March 1994 and Member of Parliament (MP) for Keningau from August 1986 to May 2018. He is founding President of the United Sabah Party (PBS) and brother of Jeffrey Kitingan, the Deputy Chief Minister II and State Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries of Sabah and President of Homeland Solidarity Party (STAR) as well as uncle of Maximus Ongkili, the Minister in the Prime Minister's Department in charge of Sabah and Sarawak affairs and President of PBS. He is the longest MP in Sabah. Personal life Pairin was born in Papar but his hometown is in the interior district of Tambunan, to a retired police officer, Datuk Francis Xavier Kitingan Sobunau (1895–1996) and his second wife, Datin Lucia Laimah Imbayan (1913–2011), natives of the said district who hailed from two villages, namely Karanaan, which was located just behind Tambunan town centre as well as Nambayan, located on the road leading to the main Interior Division town of Keningau. He attended La Salle Secondary School, an all-boys Catholic missionary school, located in Tanjung Aru, Kota Kinabalu (but prior to that, he attended a few other Catholic missionary schools namely St. David's Primary School, Toboh from primary 1 to 3, St. Theresa's Primary School, Tondulu, from primary 4 to 6 and St. Martin's Secondary School, Tampasak, from forms 1 until 3, all located in his hometown of Tambunan as well as St. Joseph's Secondary School, Papar during forms 4 to lower 6, owing to his father's job postings in the Royal Malaysia Police). He later won a Colombo Plan scholarship and went on to read law at the University of Adelaide and upon completing his studies, he came back to Sabah to work as a State Counsel with the Sabah Legal Department and was later made a Deputy Public Prosecutor. Subsequently, he practised law with a local legal firm. Pairin is a Catholic, married to Genevieve Lee, a retired teacher of mixed Hakka Chinese descent. They have two sons, Alexander and Daniel, who are both trained lawyers.