Stop the land
grabs in Johor or lose all to Umno
By Chua Jui Meng
THE
New Economic Policy (NEP), which was meant to lift the Malays from the clutches
of poverty in 20 years (from 1971 to 1990), was hijacked by Umno to enrich
their families and cronies.
It
has until today sapped dry the bulk of the wealth of corporates owned by non-Malays.
With
really nothing much left to grab, Umno is now going after Malay ancestral and
reserve lands big time.
The
most rampant of land grabs are happening in south of Johor due to Singaporeans’
thirst for property.
Tens
of thousands of land owners, the majority of whom are Malays, have been
compensated with peanuts and evicted.
Malaysians
have former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad to thank for creating the
opportunity for greedy Umno chieftains to “legally seize” whatever land they
want in the name of development.
It was Mahathir who, in 1991 used
Barisan Nasional (BN)’s brute majority in Parliament to pass by 99 to 25 votes
the Land Acquisition Amendment Bill.
The amendments 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.
Save Pengerang! Stop the land acquisition by voting out the
Umno-led Barisan Nasional.
Before the amendments, land could
only be acquired for public purposes or for public utilities like building of
roads, schools, hospitals, pipelines, water or power plants, etc.
The
amendments triggered the start of land grabs in Johor in 1992, with then Mentri
Besar, now Deputy Prime Minister, Muhyiddin Yassin seizing 32,000 acres in
Johor.
Muhyiddin’s
most widely publicised land grab attempt was the acquisition of 6,600 acres in Tebrau through the
Johor State Islamic Economic Development Corporation.
Stamford Holdings Sdn Bhd then sued
Muhyiddin Yassin, businessmen Yahya Talib and Syed Mokhtar Albukhary, for
damages for alleged conspiracy to acquire land with the use of the Act.
The land acquisition civil suit was settled
out of court for a total of RM405 million in 1999.
Today, the land grabs in Johor are
carried out by Mentri Besar Ghani Othman through his most trusted crony, Tan
Sri Dato’ Lim Kang Hoo (LKH), and links with Danga Bay and Kumpulan Prasarana
Rakyat Johor (KPRJ). Ghani is KPRJ chairman.
Ghani and his state government are
now using the Act to mop up as much land as possible from the majority Malays.
End BN-Umno’s 55 years of cronyism.
The Malay land owners are paid
“peanuts” for their land which are then alienated by KPRJ to crony property
developers to reap billions of ringgit in profits.
Thousands of majority Malay land
owners were and are being evicted to make way for greedy Umno cronies.
LKH’s friendship with Ghani and
foray into KPRJ started in 1997 with LKH buying a 25% stake (RM61.2 million) in
PLS Bhd – RM15 million in cash and RM46.2 million in debts.
LKH’s buying into PLS is
controversial because KPRJ failed to pull out when the share fell from RM12 to
RM2.
KPRJ also failed to review the
buying price or the terms of agreement before the sale.
Instead, the KPRJ’s went ahead to
buy into PLS without any discount.
In 1999, KPRJ sold its Danga Bay
land to LKH who was seen as a White Knight for settling KPRJ’s outstanding bank
loans.
LKH then seized the opportunity to
squeeze more land from KPRJ, with the reason that it had to service KPRJ’s loan
interests.
In Round 1A in 2001, KPRJ then sold
Danga A (214 acres) and Danga B (135 acres) for only RM200 million to Danga Bay
Sdn Bhd when the market price was RM1 billion!
Danga C (524 acres) was also sold
Danga Bay Sdn Bhd for RM27 million.
Also in this round of rip-off, Danga
D1 (192 acres) and Danga D2 (84 acres) were sold to Swan Atlantic Sdn Bhd and
Straits Bay Sdn Bhd for RM7.5 million and RM5.5 million respectively.
In Round 1B, Johor government’s land
was sold via privatisation to Danga Bay Sdn Bhd.
Danga E (Lagun Puteri and Pantai
Lido) totalling 154 acres were sold at RM128 million when the current market
value of the land was RM500 million.
In Round 2 of the rip-off in 2005,
six parcels of land (Skudai Kiri, D5, LKIM, Promenade Optima Bistari, D4 and
PTB21181/2/3) totalling 485 acres were sold to Danga Bay Sdn Bhd for a measly
RM150 million.
Danga Bay Sdn Bhd’s new name is
Iskandar Waterfront Development Sdn Bhd. Its original name is Abad Ehsan Sdn
Bhd.
A corporate restructuring exercise
in early 2012 involving a takeover of Tebrau Teguh Bhd, Iskandar Waterfront
Holdings (IWH) is now 60% owned by LKH’s Credence Resources Sdn Bhd
and the remaining 40% is held by KPRJ, the Johor state investment agency.
IWH’s latest development was the
sale of 55 acres of Iskandar’s Danga Bay to China’s Country Garden (Holdings)
Ltd for a whopping RM900 million last December.
According
to IWH executive vice-chairman LKH, Country Garden plans to develop a marina
and marina club, hotel, serviced apartments, offices and commercial development
that will have a gross development value of RM10 billion to RM18 billion.
Johoreans,
especially the Malays, need only see what is happening to their former land in
Danga Bay, Desaru, Iskandar, Nusajaya and Tebrau, to name a few, to realise how
much they have been short-changed for their ancestral land.
Have
Johoreans benefited?
Country
Garden joins several other developers such as Dijaya Corp Bhd, Brunsfield
Group, Australia’s Walker Group, Singapore’s Azea Residences and Umno’s UEM as
the few getting a share of Ghani’s gravy train.
In
the making is Pengerang where the non-sustainable
Petronas Refinery and Petrochemical Integrated Development (Rapid) project is
to be located.
Rapid
needs only about 6,000 acres but Ghani is using the Act to acquire 22,500
acres!
If
Ghani is allowed to continue with Rapid, thousands of villagers, the majority
of who are Malays, will be forced out of their land after getting peanuts as
compensation.
Schools,
mosques and surau, hospitals and clinics, cemeteries century old villages will
all be uprooted for property development.
This
has been BN-Umno’s land grab modus operandi since 1992.
More
misery and land grabs are expected to be launched by greedy Umno cronies if the
rakyat, especially Johoreans,
continue to give their mandate to BN-Umno to govern.
