HE was only 27 when he was sworn in as a State minister of Sarawak on July 22, 1963.
For the next 50 years, with 13 years as Federal Minister and 33 years as Chief Minister, he lived up to his own unique legacy – by being a leader with responsibility, wisdom and vision doing something significant that charted the path of the nation, especially Sarawak, to development.
Abdul Taib Mahmud was born into an aristocratic family on May 21, 1936 in Miri.
He won a Colombo Plan Scholarship to study law in the University of Adelaide, Australia. Upon graduation, he declined the offer to be on the bench as a judge but chose to return to Sarawak to serve as a Public Prosecutor. He brought back with him a barrister’s degree and a young beautiful Australian wife of Turkish descent.
Sarawak then was an economic backwater. Its longest road was a stretch of dirt road from Kuching outwards, schools were ramshackle and the children went to school barefoot, with 5,000 village and longhouses scattered all over the state with virtually no infrastructure.
The task of development was almost impossible, not even the British could do so with their over 100 years of colonial rule.
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