Career
He joined UMNO when it moved into the state in the early 1990s and was a Deputy Chief Minister in the Barisan Nasional state government between 1995 and 1997. He was elected unopposed to federal Parliament in 2004, for the newly created seat of Kalabakan on the border between Malaysia and Indonesia in East Sabah. In 2008, after his reelection (again unopposed), he was appointed as a Deputy Minister for Resources and Natural Environment by Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi, only to resign eight days later.
Later that year he openly criticised the Barisan Nasional government in Parliament for overlooking the needs states of Sabah and Sarawak, which had voted resoundingly in favour of Barisan Nasional in the 2008 election.
He again spoke out against the federal government for what he considered to be its slow response to the invasion of part of East Sabah by Filipino militants in 2013. At the same time, he criticsed UMNO"s internal election process as being open to corruption, claiming that "people will do anything just to get on the Supreme Council even if it’s very expensive".
