A sea of people are turning up to PR rally in Sri Aman, the audience keeps on growing. There is an ongoing dispute between DAP and police who are trying to shut it down. Police say the crowds on the streets are against the permit!
The people of Sarawak have nothing to lose except the brutish rule that has turned them into subservient and pliant putty. For 30 years, Taib Mahmud and his gang have shaped the putty into unquestioning objects and digits. Receiving a sudden windfall of RM 500, RM1000 or whatever amount must not be treated as the universal panacea for all the hurt and grief that you have suffered.
It is worth repeating- people of Sarawak have nothing to lose but the chains that have kept you in servitude. You were slaves to the white haired Rajah....
... And you can already sense the horrifying panic among BN politicians who are trying to instigate people not to make rash and rushed decisions. What rash and rushed decisions? That rash and rushed decision was made 30 years ago and the result has been nightmarish days and nights. You have been living under the oligarchic rule of Messrs. Taib Mahmud and his family, Alfred Jabu, and George chan. Your own James Masing is but a peon and thamby.
The only regrets that Sarawakians are going to feel will be felt IF they don't take the opportunity to create history by democratically kicking out a brutish state government. This is the only weapon of the weak. Use it decisively. This is the only effective weapon against oligarchy and plutocracy. Don't mind the meaning of these terms. They represent whatever is bad that Taib Mahmud has brought to bear upon Sarawak.
Taib Mahmud has become a loathsome figure that symbolizes everything repugnant about a government. Incompetent, negligent, corrupt, arrogant, hypocritical, bully and so forth. Taib Mahmud is a liability to BN. and you must keep it that way. Let BN keep Taib Mahmud and it will sink together with him.
What Taib Mahmud has is a huge war chest with billions of Ringgit....
Clamour is in the heartland
ANALYSIS By JOCELINE TAN [email protected]
Tan Sri Taib Mahmud is a still a big factor in the rural heartland although his posters are nowhere in sight in the urban centres
LANDING here. Then, going there.” The directions from the security personnel did not make sense to journalists from the peninsula trying to find their way to a village where Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud was expected.
What on earth did “landing here” mean?
Then the Chief Minister’s silver and red helicopter appeared in the sky and the “landing” thing clicked.
Campaigning in Sarawak involves great distances and Taib’s chief mode of transport is the helicopter. The aircraft landed on the school field and he and his wife climbed into a sleek Mercedes 600 SEL that took them to the village by the sea.
It was a beautiful day – blue skies, foamy waves rolling onto the shore and casuarina trees all around.
The village is known for its beautiful sunsets and Taib was there to campaign for his political secretary Ripin Lamat, who is contesting the Lambir seat.
The mustachioed and handsome Ripin was thrilled to bits that his boss had come. On top of that, the outgoing incumbent Aidan Wing had sportingly turned up to urge everyone to support Ripin, whom he referred to as “adik saya”.
Aidan, who has rosy cheeks and a potbelly, may be on the way out but his PR is still first-class, and he goes around smiling broadly, shaking hands with everyone including a baby.
Ripin’s opponent is someone called Siji Samit from PKR, who is obviously having a budget problem because his posters are only A4 in size, almost too small to make out in the distance.
Lambir is the sort of constituency where PBB, the party of which Taib is president, feels most at home.
Taib’s speech hit hard at PKR and the DAP. He went on at some length about the way the opposition had fought over the distribution of seats in the polls although it was doubtful if the crowd really cared two hoots about it. They looked like an audience that was more concerned about bread-and-butter issues.
But his harshest criticism was reserved for Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, with whom he had had issues from when Anwar was in power.
He attacked PKR as a party with no doctrine and which wanted to win power through protest and criticism.
“They are worse than the people they criticise,” he said.
Ripin is well assured of a win in Lambir, which is made up of 43% Malay, 29% Dayak and 28% Chinese.
This is quite a typical profile for the sort of seats being contested by PBB and that is why Taib has confidently declared that PBB will win all of the 35 seats it is contesting.
The urban ground has turned against Taib. There is not a single poster of him in Kuching, Miri or Sibu, places where SUPP is fighting for political survival because of its association with Taib. The SUPP brand name is not what it used to be.
The talk is that even Piasau, the seat which SUPP president Tan Sri Dr George Chan has occupied for 30 years, may fall.
But here, in the rural heartland, posters of Taib and Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak flutter side by side.
The official photo of Taib must have been from way back because he looks 10 years younger than Najib in the posters.
PBB candidates clamour for Taib to campaign in their areas even though they know that he is going to retire after the election.
But politicians here caution that the Dayak ground is not what it used to be.
The native customary rights or NCR land issue has unsettled many younger Ibans. Those living in the towns are starting to question the distribution of wealth and development in the state.
The Dayak seats, contested mainly by PRS and SPDP, are not about to tumble but the margin of victory will be affected.
The fact is that many of the headmen in these places are Barisan Nasional appointees and this determines their political leaning.
It is hard to break out of the pack when you live in the closed environment of a longhouse, and opposition parties campaigning in those parts have complained that they have problems accessing the longhouses.
But, according to some, the cohesiveness of longhouse politics is about to be tested after 30 years of Taib’s rule.
Taib has never been under this sort of pressure in any election.
The urban centres are in ferment and the rural ground is not as predictable as it used to be.
Clamour is in the heartland
ANALYSIS By JOCELINE TAN
Tan Sri Taib Mahmud is a still a big fa ...
atira Post at 13-4-2011 22:52
bercakap pasal NCR land ni puhhhh memang hangit sungguh...
kesian org sarawak..
misal ini analisis datuk ariff sabri..
High chief Jabu and his 48000 hectares of NCR land.
There are 6000 long houses without electricity and piped water. That's since 1963 when Sarawak became part of Malaysia. It has been 30 years of rule by Taib Mahmud, things have not changed for the 6000 long houses.
What do you call this? You call a spade a spade. Its gross negligence. Its balding incompetence. They are broken promises.
The people of Sarawak should not look at the identity of the people who made the promises to better the lives of these long house dwellers. If they do, their judgment can become blurry. Look at the issue objectively. They should just throw out the incompetent fools who manage the state. So, it happens to be Taib Mahmud and his gang who ruled Sarawak for umpteen years. Zero in on incompetence and negligence. You can't have this kind of people running the state for us.
Democracy means exercising a choice. You can choose to throw out incompetent, negligent and corrupt leadership.
The issue is always this:- Leadership and its management of the entrusted entity. Its leadership and management of the state.
Just think at the micro level. Don't bother about the dams. Ignore the eye pleasing river side esplanades and so forth. Look at yourselves. Have your lives become improved and better? If not blame it squarely on the leaders who hold the powers and the purse strings. Don't let RM 500 and RM 1000 sudden windfall erase the bitter memory of having to put up with incompetent and negligent leaders.
We have not yet begun analyzing the rape and plunder of NCR lands and the issue of Al Kitab yet.
Let's single out your own kind first. That deputy CM representing the Dayak communities- Alfred Jabu. You have qualified dayaks among you and still you are suffering fools by continuing to support people like Jabu.
Let's judge Jabu in his capacity of Chairman of Salcra. Would you entrust him to manage your company? Elsewhere people sack incompetent managers. Here you are willing to put with masochistic pains. The pains are inflicted by Jabu and his gang of cabals.
Just look at his lifestyle. Jabu has a palatial house and is noted for the conspicuous wealth of his family. Look at the decor inside the house. Look at the additional wing to his already large mansion. But he can't give out dividends to the NCR landowners whose land he manages.
So, could it be that this most incompetent manager is nevertheless a highly competent thief? You cant call a person other than by this term. Compare his lifestyle with that of those poor Native Customary Rights Landowners, who participated in SALCRA scheme more than 30 years ago.
Salcra is something like our own Felda or Felcra Schemes. Owners of small parcels of land pool their land resource under one centralized, economies of scale justified management. The management company is called SALCRA. The original aim was to rescue the NCR land owners from poverty. After 30 years, they are still scraping a living from the most miserable dividends that could possibly be imagined from the so-called business partnership run on their behalf by Jabu. You can judge him solely on this. Forget the kinship. Forget being from the same ancestral bloodline.
You have two leaders at the helm doing the same thing. What Taib Mahmud does with his rapacious 'Joint Venture Companies', Jabu is doing the same screw job through his chairmanship of SALCRA.
How does the SALCRA scheme work? Under the programme the state government offers NCR landowners formal title to their customary lands, if they agree to join in the SALCRA state-run palm oil plantations. So SALCRA is the state-run palm oil plantation. In return the landowners will get formal title which is claimable against the whole world and also promised a share of the proceeds.
What can participants expect? They can and should expect a well-run management company, whose management is transparent and accountable and which gives out dividends. No one who owns palm oil plantations does not make money. More so in recent years when the price for palm oil has been good.
If Jabu does not make money, or make as much money at the average industry players and is not forthcoming about the management of the company and does not give out dividends or gives out below industry dividends, what do these things show? These show that Jabu and his cabals are incompetent fools who are hiding so many things. If they don't give out dividends or give below industry average dividends and returns, they are lining up their own pockets. These are valid and justifiable conclusions to make.
Jabu has to answer to the 20,000 thousand families who have been coopted into the SALCRA scheme. Yet SALCRA has not given any public financial information on how it runs the management company. What dividends there are, are announced on a whim and at his own political convenience.
Jaby has under his direct control, 48,000 hectares of Native Customary Rights Lands through SALCRA (most of it planted with mature palms). He has not provided a single audit or report on SALCRA's management within the past 35 years. The landowners themselves have no representation on the Board or within Management or have any way of gaining any information whatsoever about the finances of the business in which they are supposed to be partners.
This is the classic 'give me your trust' and ask not what the government can do for you kind of thinking. The government and the high official is the dispenser of largesse, of sustenance. The people- in this case, the NCR landowners are his minders, the ward.
The NCR landowners just wait and hope that their dividends will turn up at some stage in their bank accounts as a gift from the powerful chief. They wait for chief Jabu with bowls in hand. Numerous accounts exist of landowners who have received no dividends for years or otherwise pathetic pay outs that would not feed their families for a week.
How does the high chief Jabu handle his ward- the inhabitants who have given him their trust? Jabu habitually uses the dividend as a form of political blackmail, as if it was some kind of generous gesture or bribe to induce the SALCRA participants do his bidding.
The timing of his bidding couldn't be more opportune. In the next few days, SALCRA members can expect a 'bumper payout' from kind Mr Jabu just in time for the election. Wow, Jabu has studied the Toyota Management technique of JIT Management. What has Jabu announced? He has announced that this year he will be distributing what he says were a 'record RM74 million' in profits during the days before the election, saying that it is twice what he handed out last year. Last year he handed out RM 37 million.
Ok, he says he will give out RM74 million. Let's take him on this and expose his incompetence. The most important resource is the land. The landowner can expect a big payout. Study the principle behind the PSC PETRONAS has with the oil majors. After costs, PETRONAS gets 80% of the profit. Maybe we should have applied the same principle on the NCR landowners. After all, they have surrendered up their territories.
A RM 74 million ringgit profit on a 48,000 hectare palm plantation is quite simply pathetic. That's only RM 1,541 profit per hectare. As a comparison how much did IOI the plantation giant made? IOI says that its operating profit last year amounted to RM 11,448 per hectare. Even taking into account the various added costs of possible loans and other expenses that could diminish the operating profit the discrepancy between the two figures is ridiculous. When Jabu earned RM 729 per hectare in 2010, IOI earned RM 13,347 per hectare. How is anyone supposed to feed his family off that?
So, let's ignore the identity of the person who made the promise. Let's judge him objectively. How can a person having 40,000 hectares of palm oil under his management pay pittance to the landowners?
Democracy means exercising a choice freely. Let's reject incompetence.
Post time 13-4-2011 08:43 PM
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