FELDA’S troubles may have made national headlines but for the majority of 1.2 million plantation settlers and their families, the latest RM270 million land scandal is but a sideshow.

More pressing for them are the huge debts they owe the agency and the poor upkeep of their smallholdings by Felda subsidiary, Felda Technoplant Sdn Bhd (FTP).

Settlers’ groups said these everyday worries are what will rock the Felda vote spread out over 54 rural parliamentary seats in Peninsular Malaysia.

The Felda vote has long been a certainty, or a “fixed deposit”, for Barisan Nasional, but land reform agency’s mismanagement of settlers’ holdings and their debts are jeopardising this traditional support base.

Financial scandals such as the Jalan Semarak land sale and acquisition of overvalued hotel properties could intensify the anger of the settlers, especially those of the second generation, at the government.

These scandals are campaign fodder for Pakatan Harapan (PH) which is making major inroads into Felda, thanks to former prime minister-turned opposition icon Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

However, Zulkefli Nordin, head of SGK2F, a group representing second-generation settlers, said the settlers were little bothered by the latest revelation of possible fraud in a Felda land transaction.

It was their poorly managed holdings and their high debts that the settlers were concerned about, he said.

“The mismanagement of their holdings by Felda and  FeldaTechnoplant Sdn Bhd (FTP), their debts and their loan statements, which are not transparent – these are the issues that the government must settle if they want to win back the hearts of Felda settlers. These are the issues that everyone is talking about in the schemes, ” Zulkefli told the The Malaysian Insight in a WhatsApp message.

Felda settler families typically span two or three generations.

The first generation are the original settlers who received 4ha of land for them to plant rubber trees or oil palms. This group make up 30 to 40% of the Felda vote .

The second generation are the children of the original settlers. These make up 50 to 60% of the Felda vote. Their children are third generation settlers, but not all of them have reached voting age.

Zulkefli said the original settlers were mostly still loyal to BN.

“The (first generation) settlers are not the problem. But the opposition is playing up the main issues that Felda has failed to properly address, and bringing them to the attention of the settlers and their children.

“These issues will not dissuade the settlers from voting for BN; what concerns us is the younger generation,” he said.

Debt a bigger worry

The Jalan Semarak land deal was exposed by Malay daily Berita Harian last month. It reported that Felda could lose four parcels of prime land in Kuala Lumpur from a dubious title transfer in 2015.
Felda had discovered that ownership of the land parcels had been transferred to a developer and that the same developer had been given power of attorney to develop the land for the Kuala Lumpur Vertical City project. Felda is currently trying to recover the land parcels.

Zulkefli acknowledged that Felda’s new chairman, Shahrir Samad, who took over in January last year, was working hard to restore the fortunes and reputation of the land reform authority, but this had little direct impact on the settlers.

“(For instance) settlers still have problems getting their loan statements. When the statements are produced, there are suspicious details.

“Until now Felda and FTP has failed to produce convincing statements,” Zulkefli said.

The settlers owe Felda RM60,000 to RM160,000 each for replanting their smallholdings about 15 years ago, and Felda has taken over the management of the smallholdings and their harvests to recover the money.

But settlers have claimed that Felda has not been transparent in its dealings with them and that the financial statements they were issued did not clearly show how much they owed and how much had been repaid.

Some claim they owed Felda even though they had paid to replant their smallholdings with their own money.

PH’s Wan Mohd Shahrir Wan Abd Jalil, who is charge of a Felda task force, argued that the Jalan Semarak land scandal would  cost BN a significant number of Felda votes.

The scandal, he said, proved the opposition right in its claims that the BN government was mismanaging Felda.

But Wan Shahrir admitted that bread-and-butter issues of debt and income could well be what ultimately pushed the Felda voters, even the first-generation settlers, over to the other side.

“The original settlers make up a small proportion of the vote, but those who support BN are complaining about late payments for harvests, shoddy upkeep of their holdings and their debts,” said Wan Shahrir, who is Bersatu Pahang chairman.

Opportunistic opposition

The Jalan Semarak land deal was an opening that the opposition was unlikely to ignore, said Fakhrurrazi Mohd Habib, who heads Kami Anak Felda, another settlers group.

“To me, the opposition are opportunists. Once an issue blows up, they will spin and sensationalise it. So we in Felda have to respond to these claims.”

He said second-generation settlers were most likely to turn against the government.

“The second generation is not as close to the Felda ideal; they don’t know the struggles of the first generation who did not have land and were given land by the government.”

Former Felda Youth Council president Anuar Manap said a swift response to the Jalan Semarak scandal would help diffuse its impact on settlers.

“There is nostalgia surrounding the properties as they were the site of the settlers’ rallies and where we went to do business with the agency,” said Anuar, who is Barisan Nasional’s Sekijang MP. – January 6, 2018.