Court in Borneo). The current Chief Judge of Sabah and Sarawak is Abang Iskandar Abang Hashim from Sarawak. His office is the fourth highest in the Malaysian judicial system (behind the Chief Judge of Malaya, President of the Court of Appeal, and Chief Justice of Malaysia). Politics Compared to West Malaysia, political parties in Sarawak and Sabah started relatively late. This first political party in Sarawak emerged in 1959 while the first political party in Sabah emerged in August 1961. Sarawak held its first local authorities election in 1959 and did not have any directly elected legislature until 1970. Sabah only held its first district council election in December 1962 and first direct election in April 1967. Both the states were new and had little experience in organised, competitive politics. Therefore, there had been the appearance and rapid disappearance of political parties in Sarawak and Sabah within a short period of time, with some parties took opportunistic moves to form alliances without a definite loyalty to a certain political alignment. The ethnic composition of East Malaysia is also different from West Malaysia. The indigenous people in both Sarawak and Sabah do not form an absolute majority, while the non-native population in East Malaysia mainly consisting of entirely Chinese. Political parties in Sarawak and Sabah were formed largely based on communal lines and can be categorised roughly into native non-Muslim, native Muslim, and non-native parties. With the support of the Malaysia federal government, native Muslim parties in Sabah and Sarawak were strengthened. In Sabah, the native Muslim party United Sabah National Organisation (USNO) first clinged on the chief minister post in 1965 and later consolidated its power in 1967. In Sarawak, native Muslim party named Parti Bumiputera (which later regrouped into Parti Pesaka Bumiputera Bersatu (PBB) held the chief minister post since 1970. In 1976, all the Sabah and Sarawak MPs supported the Malaysian parliament bill which downgraded both the states from being equal partners to Malaya as a whole, to one of the 13 states in the federation. Since 2008, East Malaysia played a more significant role in the national political landscape. The loss of two-thirds majority of Barisan Nasional (BN) government in the West Malaysia caused the BN to rely on East Malaysian politicians to cling on power. After the conclusion of 2013 Malaysian general election, there was an increase in ministers and deputy ministers allocation for East Malaysia