Lajim Ukin is a Malaysian politician. He was the Member of Parliament for the Beaufort constituency in Sabah from 2008 to 2013, and a Deputy Minister for Housing and Local Government in the federal Barisan Nasional coalition government, from 2009 until his departure from the coalition in 2012. He was also the leader of the opposition in the Sabah State Legislative Assembly. Before entering federal politics, Lajim was a prominent figure in Sabah state politics. He was a member of the United Sabah Party before defecting to United Malays National Organisation in 1994. He later served as Deputy Chief Minister in the Sabah government. Lajim was elected to Parliament in the 2008 election, as a member of the United Malays National Organisation in the seat of Beaufort. He was subsequently appointed Deputy Minister for Transport, moving to the portfolio of Housing and Local Government in 2009. In July 2012, he renounced his official positions in UMNO to align himself with the Pakatan Rakyat opposition coalition. This resulted in the revocation of his appointment as a deputy minister. He recontested his parliamentary seat in the 2013 election on a People's Justice Party ticket, but was defeated. While losing his federal seat, he won the election for the Sabah State Legislative Assembly seat. He became the leader of the opposition in the State Assembly. On 2 October 2016, Lajim resigned from PKR along with two other Pakatan Harapan assemblymen. He has stated his intention to form a new Sabah-based party and ally with the former Sabah UMNO leader, Shafie Apdal. He later decide to establish a separate party from Shafie, known as Sabah People's Hope Party, which finally been approved by Registrar of Societies on 25 October 2016. PHRS was dissolved to let its party members absorbed into Malaysian United Indigenous Party in 2019. In early 2017, Lajim was injured after falling from a train car on the way to attend a wedding. He was then referred to a local traditional Chinese medicine practitioner called "sinseh" and have since been advised to rest for one week. Lajim is also known to default on his promises. After commissioning a ghostwriter to write a book about the history of his political party, he failed to deliver his promises to pay the writer and printing costs, leaving the writer in debt with unsold books. This is thought to be one of the factors that eroded the voters' confidence in the ruling coalition that his party belongs to, culminating in the results of 2019 Kimanis by-election, which saw the opposition coalition win, defeating the three-way coalition containing Pakatan Harapan, which incorporates Malaysian United Indigenous Party.
