New Sabah head of state brings with him a judicious touch to office

By Wendy Radin
Pictures by Ng Jia Xiang

Juhar Mahiruddin, 57, cuts a respectable austere figure that quite naturally gives him the stature of a ruler. His affinity for peacekeeping as a house speaker makes him a redoubtable statesman. His sober and sensitive demeanour stems from his legal training and more than 25 years in politics. He has known poverty, defeat and rejection. The first lawyer to take office on New Year’s Day tomorrow as the 10th head of state of Sabah, Juhar brings with him a judicious touch to his largely ceremonial role.

Yet the humble and soft-spoken Juhar told Insight Sabah in an interview on December 27 that he has accepted the state’s highest office with mixed feelings. It has surprised him.

“I don’t know what to expect,” he said at his office at the state legislative assembly in Kota Kinabalu. “I don’t know if I can do the job.”

Juhar has been the speaker of the Sabah legislative assembly for eight years and he is fond of the job. He was the deputy parliamentary speaker for nine years from 1990-1999. His legal training has stood him in good stead, he said.

But he has no illusion as to what the governor’s job entails. Conscious of his “very heavy responsibility”, Juhar knows that he has to be apolitical. “As the head of state, my responsibility is to the state, not to any particular group of people,” he said. “I’m going to do my best as is expected of me.”

That shouldn’t be a problem. As a house speaker, Juhar has straddled the political divide. “I never had a fight with the opposition”, he said. “I didn’t scream, I didn’t shout and I didn’t quarrel with them. There are ways to control the house without quarrelling with them.”

He has many memorable moments in his long career as a speaker. One was when former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad tabled a bill in 1993 to remove the immunity from Malaysia’s nine hereditary rulers from prosecution. The other was when fist fights broke out in parliament. Yet another was the recent ruckus at the Sabah assembly during a budget debate when he had to adjourn the house for 20 minutes to allow tempers to cool.

The Istana (palace) will take him away from such excitement. But he sees himself mingling with the people to hear them out, care for them and to interact with them; something which he has grown accustomed to as a politician.

Born on Tambisan island at the far end of eastern Sabah, Juhar empathizes with the poor fishermen and farmers whom he grew up with. He shares chief minister Musa Aman’s vision of making Sabah a rich state by 2015; by then he might be serving his second term of office.

Politics runs in his family. His father Mahiruddin Hussin was an influential politician of the now defunct United Sabah National Organisation (Usno) of the late Datu Mustapha Datu Harun who ruled Sabah for nine years from 1967-1976. His younger sister Armani is the deputy president of the senate.

Juhar said he had always wanted to be a lawyer although he wasn’t sure whether he saw law as a stepping stone to politics. His ambition firmed up when he was in form three. Mustapha was recruiting lawyers for his party. Lawyers were then highly regarded as there were few of them.

He graduated with a law degree from Wolverhampton Poly University in England in 1977 and was called to the Bar of Lincoln’s Inn in 1980. But his legal career was short. He was a first class magistrate for a year and went into private practice from 1982 to 1985.

Politics beckoned. He suffered two election defeats before he was elected a member of parliament of Kinabatangan on an Usno ticket in 1990. “That was the happiest moment of my life,” Juhar said. The late king Tuanku Ja’afar immediately appointed him as the deputy speaker of parliament because "I'm a lawyer," he said. “I was only 36 at the time.”

Juhar was one of those who brought Umno to Sabah after the demise of Usno in 1991. But politics hasn’t been a bed of roses for him. He was dropped from the 1999 polls. In 2008 he was voted out of his post as chief of Batu Sapi Umno division. His cousin Samsuddin Yahya, a lawmaker of Sekong, defeated him.

Stoically, Juhar accepted his setbacks and went back to legal practice before he was appointed speaker of the Sabah assembly in 2002. “I didn’t complain,” he said of his setbacks. “I continued to work for the party.”

His other concern as head of state is protocol that might restrain him from indulging in his hobby: playing the guitar in a band and singing in public. He is also a keen photographer and videographer. There is an artistic streak in him. He painted landscapes when he was younger.

But he may be the first head of state who doesn’t play golf. “I’ve never played golf in my life,” he said.

Juhar is married to Norlidah Jasni. They have four children, two boys and two girls. Eldest son Al Hambra, 27, has just graduated with a business degree from Victoria University in Melbourne. Daughter Al Hanna Surya, 24, has a degree in international business from Limkokwing University of Creative Technology.

Al Hanafi, 18, is doing A-levels law at Taylor’s University College in Petaling Jaya after much coaxing from his father. Youngest daughter Al Hamaliyah Hasya, 8, is a pupil in Mutiara primary school. – Insight Sabah