Peter Lo Sui Yin

Tan Sri Datuk Peter Lo Su Yin (Chinese: 羅思仁; 19 May 1923 – 1 January 2020) was Chief Minister of Sabah from January 1965 to May 1967. He was a member of the Sabah Chinese Association (SCA).

Biography Peter Lo Su Yin was born to ethnic Chinese settlers on 19 May 1923 in Sandakan, Sabah. He first attended St. Mary's School in Sandakan and after that St. Anthony's Boys School in Singapore. Having won a scholarship through the Colombo Plan in 1952 to study Law at the Victoria University of Wellington in Wellington, New Zealand, in 1955 he received his Bachelor of Law degree. In 1956 he was admitted to the Bar, thus becoming the first Sabahan to graduate in law and qualify as a lawyer.

On returning to Sabah (or Crown Colony of North Borneo as it was known then), he worked for the Singapore law firm Donaldson & Burkinshaw in Sandakan between 1957 and 1961. At the same time, in 1958, he took a position with the Sandakan Town Board and was soon promoted to the senior post of Deputy Chairman, which he held until 1961. He left Donaldson & Burkinshaw in 1961 to set up his own law practice; Peter Lo & Co, the first Sabah law firm to be opened by a local Sabahan and which to this day still exists as a practising law firm.

Lo served as a Member of Parliament for the new Malaysia from 1963 to 1978. In 1964 he was appointed Minister without portfolio to serve in the Federal Cabinet under the then Prime Minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman, the first Sabahan to hold this privilege. Then in late 1964, following a collapse in the Sabah coalition government due to tension between the 2 leading parties UPKO (United Pasok Momogon Kadazan Organisation) and USNO (United Sabah National Organisation), Lo was appointed Chief Minister of Sabah when the incumbent Chief Minister, Donald Stephens resigned. His eldest daughter became BBC editor-cum-producer in London, the second daughter became a senior officer with a bank in Sabah, the youngest daughter became a chartered accountant in London while his son became a lawyer in Singapore.