For Bernard Dompok, things don’t always turn out as he wishes. But the 66-year-old indigenous Kadazandusun politician can often count on his lucky stars. Born in the largely rice-growing suburb of Penampang, the heartland of Kadazan nationalism, Mr Dompok was the only Sabah chief minister to have been voted out by his people with a vengence. It wasn’t his first defeat in 1999, though. Voters kicked him out from the Penampang parliamentary seat twice – in 1995 and then in 2013. Yet defeat is sweet for Mr Dompok who has become Malaysia’s first ambassador to the Vatican. He is a Roman Catholic.
Sabah Insights 