A confused Umno

How smart are our politicians really, and was a university education wasted on them? But it does not take a university education to know the difference between right and wrong, or between good and bad.

Last week, Minister in the Sabah Chief Minister's Office Nasir Sakaran said that he was confident that the appointment of former Negeri Sembilan Menteri besar Mohd Isa Abdul Samad as the new chairman of FELDA would take the land development agency to greater heights.

Nasir, is also responsible for FELDA affairs in Sabah, said that he based his confidence on Mohd Isa's outstanding performance and wide experience in government administration.

He said, “Isa is certainly capable of leading the FELDA second generation to greater achievements.”

Unless Nasir is in his teens, or his reading is limited, he must have heard that Isa was once found guilty of corruption. The Umno Disciplinary Board itself suspended Mohd Isa from the party for six years.

Is corruption and suspension, what Nasir calls outstanding performance?

If anything, Isa would certainly use his wide experience of graft, to siphon funds from FELDA now that he has been given authority to do so, by Prime minister Najib Abdul Razak.

Meanwhile, the newly appointed FELDA chairman, Mohd Isa, said that he would use his experience to counter opposition slander against the land development authority.

Is that his top priority?

In most parts of the world, any politician with a whiff of scandal attached to him, has his career terminated as soon as he is exposed. But not, it appears, in Malaysia.

Malaysia is where politicians treat corruption or sex scandals like badges of honour. They treat these with pride and list them as one of their achievements in their curriculum vitae.

The original purpose of FELDA was to lift the ordinary settlers out of poverty and give them an income so that they are self-sufficient and contributing to the economy.

But the settlers then, are different from the settlers now.

We now see the emergence of an underclass of youth. They are alienated and see how their cousins in the towns lead lives that are preferential to theirs. With television and relatively forms of travel (as compared to their parents’ times) they see a different world than what they are used to, or even what their parents are familiar with.

Their settlements may be equipped with communication facilities and modern infrastructure but the youth feel disenchanted with life on the land and thousands migrate to the cities.

The plan was for each settlement to develop as a modern agricultural society and morph into a new industrialised centre, based on agriculture.

However, the fall in prices of oil palm, rubber and all oil palm-based and rubber-based products in addition to inflation and the downturn in the world economy, had a devastating effect on the welfare of the FELDA settlers and their families.

The problems that were found included economic problems, criminal activities and social problems. They ranged from wife working alone to support the whole family to problems that can destroy the society like drug-use, racing, black magic, incest, spread of HIV to school problems such as low achievement, truancy and discipline.

They say that Isa is able to reconnect with the ordinary settler and restore their sense of belonging because he has vast political and administrative experience. He has had two decades experience as a Mentri Besar and is supposedly endearing to voters.

But can Isa really engage with this problem community? His past and his age seem to be the obvious barriers.

Forget about Isa’s ‘niceness’ and being friendly with people. Often, it is this nice façade that hides the bad traits beneath.

Rosa Mitterer, who worked as a maid for Adolf Hitler at his mountain retreat in Bavaria in the 1930s, broke her vow of silence when she was in her 90s.

Her verdict on her former master: “He was a charming man, someone who was only ever nice to me, a great boss to work for. You can say what you like, but he was a good man to us.”

Niceness should not be the main criteria for getting the job done. - Malaysia Chronicle