How
BN-Umno cheats for wealth
By
Chua Jui Meng
NOW that a Royal Commission of
Inquiry (RCI) has exposed former premier Mahathir Mohamad as the man who gave
citizenship to foreigners to cheat in general elections in Sabah, what can
Malaysians expect to see next?
Nothing. Umno leaders and their
cronies are not subject to law. Only the Opposition leaders and the ordinary rakyat (people) must fear the law.
This is the way it works in the Umno-led
Barisan Nasional Bolehland (Land of anything can) government.
The law does not apply to those in
the Corridors of Power.
With such a skewered system of
injustice, it is no wonder investors are shying away and our neighbouring countries
are sprinting ahead of Malaysia economically.
Save
Pengerang! Stop BN-Umno’s land grab and disregard for public health and safety.
Both local and foreign investors
cannot be faulted for exercising extreme caution with unjust laws, like the
Land Acquisition Act 1960 (details of this Act below).
The Act has been abused to enable
governments and Umno chieftains to “rob” people of their land in the name of
development.
It just means investing into
property or land in Malaysia is unsafe.
Why
are we the world champion in corruption? Why is our federal debt rising like
there is no tomorrow?
The moment the greedy Umno
chieftains and their cronies eye your land, you will be forced to surrender
your land for peanuts.
And, who do you have to thank for
such an unjust law? Mahathir Mohamad, the racist who ruled Malaysia for 22
years.
The land grabs are now rampant in
Johor because of the Singaporean market and the majority of the losers are the
ancestral land of Malays.
The following two stories show how
the BN-Umno cheats to retain their power and how they “rob” to enrich itself
and their cronies:
Thursday, 17 January 2013 12:54
Sabah
citizenship-for-votes: RCI confirms Dr M is the 'REAL TRAITOR' - Azmin
Written by Wong Choon Mei, Malaysia Chronicle
UPDATED PKR deputy
president Azmin Ali called on former premier Mahathir Mohamad to own up and
take responsibility for the the influx of illegal immigrants into Sabah, where
Mahathir's administration has been accused of "selling" citizenship
to economic and social migrants mainly from the Philippines and Indonesia
during the 1980s in exchange for them voting in the latter's Umno-BN coalition
during elections."The special operations was headed by Dr Mahathir and if you look at the testimony by the witnesses, they confirm that the officers and all those involved were directly under the PM's office - the Home Ministery, the NRD, the Immigtaion. All these agencies were under the leadership of Dr Mahathir and so Dr Mahathir must be responsible," Azmin told a press conference of Thursday.
He was referring to a recently-begun Royal Commission of Inquiry into the issue, which has been a sore point with the Sabah people for decades. Not only have the influx of migrants presented a myriad of social and infrastructure problems, Sabahans believed their economic heritage has been threatened as well.
Dr M's confidantes' included his pol sec Aziz Shamsuddin?
Two of Mahathir's closest confidantes - Abdul Aziz Shamsuddin, his political secretary at that time, and Megat Junid, the late former Deputy home Minister - were implicated by witnesses who testified before the RCI a day ago.
"After receiving instructions from then-Sabah NRD chief Abdul Rauf Sani, we were ordered to go to KL and were placed at Pak Aziz Shamsuddin's residence in Kampung Pandan," Malaysiakini reported Yakup Damsah, who was the Tamparuli NRD chief at that time, as saying.
According to Yakup, they were tasked to sign the identity cards that were to be issued to the immigrants, which were subsequently laminated at the NRD headquarters in Petaling Jaya and shipped to the Kota Kinabalu NRD for distribution. "We were briefed about our special assignment by a person not known to us, named 'Mat Nor'. He told us to issue blue identity cards to the immigrants," Yakup added.
He told the RCI his group signed a total of 40,000 blue identity cards within a month, based on the filled up application forms provided to them. "We did not look at the forms in detail, we just signed... We know that they were immigrants, mostly Indonesians and Filipinos, but we did not know whether they were legal immigrants or not," he said.
Yakup also said the intent of their action was to increase the number of Muslim voters in Sabah and to ensure that these people would vote for Umno in the 1994 Sabah state election.
Megat Junid
As for the late Megat Junid, former Sabah NRD Ramli Kamaruddin told the RCI he received personal instructions from the deputy home minister to issue identity card receipts to immigrants using the details of people who were already in the electoral roll but had never voted before.
“I received a call two weeks before the 1994 Sabah state election to meet Megat Junid at a hotel. I was instructed to help to ensure that a state government endorsed by the federal government would win. I was instructed to issue NRD receipts using the name and IC numbers of voters already in the electoral roll, with the sole purpose of allowing them to vote,” Ramli said.
NRD receipts are temporary identity card slips that are issued prior to the granting of a proper identity card. This document is sufficient to enable a person to vote, he explained.
The real traitors of Malaysia
"These are the real traitors of the country. People who sell citizenship for the sake of political power," Azmin slammed Mahathir.
Mahathir is expected to issue a response to the latest RCI testimony. He had previously denied any knowledge of the scam and had opined the RCI would do no good when Najib finally bowed to pressure from Sabah parties to hold the inquiry.
However given the limited authority and terms of reference of the RCI, even if found guilty, the panel will not be able to charge or prosecute Mahathir or any other personality found guilty of perpetuating the scheme.
“The RCI will not deliver any result that will solve the problems. When there is a RCI it will bring about other matters,” Mahathir, who ruled Malaysia from 1981 to 2003, had responded to news of the RCI's establishment.
“Previously they have been coming and going. They are not alien to Sabah; they have been going back and forth between Sabah and the Philippines. Maybe they feel Sabah is safer and that is why they stay there.”
Malaysia Chronicle
Land grab, Malaysian-style
October 6, 2012
Land grab is non-discriminatory;
Malaysians from all racial, religious and social strata are affected.
COMMENT
This is not a new issue, in fact it
is 21 years old.
It all began when the Barisan
Nasional government, with its overwhelming majority in Parliament, passed by 99
to 25 votes the 1991 Land Acquisition Amendment Bill, or Act A804. The
rephrasing of sections of the Land Acquisition Act 1960 basically gave
incontestable power to state governments to seize private land for development
by private companies and individuals. Lands originally acquired for public
purposes can also be used for private development.
Before Act A804, land could only be
acquired for public purposes or for public utilities like building of roads,
schools, hospitals, pipelines, water or power plants, etc. With the addition of
“…for any purpose which in the opinion of the State Authority is beneficial to
the economic development of Malaysia”, no land is safe.
The term “beneficial to the economic
development of Malaysia” is as subjective as you can get. A piece of land can
be acquired to build a posh five-star hotel, an amusement park or a golf resort
because in the opinion of the government it would bring in the tourist dollar
and create jobs for locals, not to mention enriching the private companies
which would, of course, be paying taxes.
To really make the Land Acquisition
Act water-tight for the acquirer, Section 68A says that acquisitions cannot be
invalidated by reason of any kind of subsequent disposal or use (etc) of the
acquired land.
This new provision aims at
preventing the acquirer or the purported purpose from being challenged in
court. You can only challenge the quantum of the compensation offered, the
measurement of the land area, the person whom compensation is payable to, and
the apportionment of the compensation.
The leader of the opposition then,
Lim Kit Siang, in opposing Act A804, gave this dire warning: “When it becomes
law, it will destroy the constitutional right to property enjoyed by Malaysians
for 34 years since Merdeka, and become the mother of all corruption, abuses of
power, conflicts-of-interest and unethical malpractices in Malaysia…”
Was Kit Siang just over-reacting or
scare-mongering when he said that or is it a prophecy that was and is being
fulfilled till today?
A new ball game
The impetus for the passing of Act
A804 was for the acquisition of 33,000 acres of land in the Gelang Patah area
for the construction of the second link with Singapore and the construction of
a new township by UEM, wiping out 19 villages and displacing 10,000 people.
The Johor state government offered
the affected smallholders compensation averaging RM26,000 per acre or 64 sen
per sqe ft, far below the then market value of RM100,000 per acre for
agricultural land.
In a subsequent civil suit by one of
the affected landowners against the government of Johor in 1995, it was
revealed that a subsidiary of Renong was offering the intended development for
sale at RM17 per sq ft, a whopping 28 times more than what the original
landowners got!
For a glimpse into some of the
backroom wheeling and dealing that went on with these deals, one should read
the court papers of cases like “Honan Plantations vs Govt of Johor’; and
“Stamford Holdings vs Govt of Johor”. Names of notable personalities like
Muhyiddin Yassin, Syed Mokhtar Albukhary and Yahya Talib in secret meetings
were mentioned.
For the Second Link and the highway
that linked it to the North-South Expressway to be built, the Land Acquisition
Act was necessary. To be fair, compensation had to not only take into account
the then prevailing market value but also the loss of livelihood for the people
who used to live off the land.
With Act A804, the government seized
a lot more land than was required for the custom and immigration complex and
the highway. We can safely say it seized almost 24,000 acres more for a private
corporation, UEM, albeit it is a GLC (government-linked corporation).
Today, UEM Land, as the master
developer of the 23,875-acre Nusajaya (as the acquired land is now called)
boasts of its enormous landbank and potential billions in profit from its
development. We want to ask this simple poignant question: whose lands were
these originally, and what about the 10,000 over affected villagers? Shouldn’t
these people be beneficiaries of development and not its victims? Perhaps some
of the villagers are now working in Legoland, who knows?
While some of the people behind the
scenes went on to achieve high office and some made it to the top 10
billionaires list, thousands of other nameless Malaysians are without land and
opportunities.
Land grab is non-discriminatory:
Malaysians from all racial, religious and social strata are affected.
Gelang Patah was just the precursor
to a new ball game called Land Grab and the same modus operandi was used for
Seremban 2, Bandar Aman Jaya in Sungai Petani, Pantai Kundor/Pantai Tanah Merah
and Paya Mengkuang in Melaka, Kerpan in Kedah, Sepang in Selangor, lands
acquired for the MRT project, Jalan Sultan, native customary lands in the
Peninsula, Sabah and Sarawak, and many, many more.
Of course, not all compulsory
acquisitions are unjust or not justifiable; but there should be a fair and
unskewed avenue for aggrieved landowners through the justice system to question
certain acquisitions.
The courts now are somewhat
constrained by Act A804, and in almost all cases such acquisitions are not
reversed.
The Pengerang grab
Twenty years on, the same script is
being acted out in Johor again (a BN stronghold), this time to the east in
Pengerang.
A total of 22,500 acres of land are
being acquired for the development of the Pengerang Integrated Petroleum
Complex (PIPC). The anchor project in this proposal is Petronas’ RAPID project
which requires a sizeable 6,424 acres.
Smallholders and plantations are
being offered between RM1.80 psf and RM8 psf for their land.
Can Pengerang be called Gelang Patah
2.0 where again, on the pretext of development, a huge tract of land is being
taken from their original landowners and placed in the hands of one or a few
wealthy individuals and corporations? Is the PIPC the main play or is property
speculation the main play?
Would the same prime minister who
mooted the Third Link to Singapore in 2009 make the announcement again after
all the land has been acquired? Who are the direct beneficiaries of such
development?
All these are so “legal” that one
government official after another is spewing out that it is done properly under
the terms of the Land Acquisition Act 1960. It may be legal, but is it moral?
Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak made
a statement during the launch of the sixth International Association of
Anti-Corruption Authorities Conference in Kuala Lumpur on the Oct 4, 2012: “Is
the unbridled and ruthless pursuit of extraordinary profits a form of
corruption? I believe that if we see corruption as fundamentally a moral
problem, therefore anything that promotes selfish interest at the expense of
the well-being of others is morally wrong. It was vapid [tasteless]
self-interest and greed that was truly at the heart of corruption. ”
Mr Prime Minister, I could not agree
with you more.
How much is enough for the greedy?
How many more poor and defenseless villagers must be forcibly displaced and
robbed of the fruits of development to satisfy the insatiable appetites of the
greedy who uses the Land Acquisition Act to enrich themselves? Who will speak
up for the thousands who will be landless and many without a means of
livelihood?
It is evil when a law is crafted to
take away land from the poor without their consent, fair compensation or share
in its benefits so that a few might make it to Forbes’ list of billionaires. We
should all be foaming at our mouth with anger at this injustice but instead we
just thank God daily that it is not our land they have come to take, at least
not yet. - FMT
