Felda Sabah or Federal Territory Sabah: A ticking time bomb for BN in GE-13

Sabah, officially the Land Below the Wind -- Negeri di Bawah Bayu -- has also had another name, albeit unofficial, in recent years. Since Umno took over the state government in 1994, it has also become known as Negeri di Bawah Penjajahan Malaya or the Land Under Malayan Colonialists, and with good reasons too.

The latest 'cow dung' in Malaysia to hit the ceiling fan is the role or “non-role” of Felda or the Federal Land Development Authority in the state.

The authority is in effect brazenly occupying nearly a third of a million acres – 306,000 acres to be exact -- in Sabah in defiance of the state constitution, the Governor, the state government and the very concept of Federation.

False pretenses

Felda entered the state in 1979 under 'false' pretenses or with grandiose promises it has not kept. There are no signs as yet that the Federal Agency will ever surrender the said land back to the state.

To add insult to injury, large chunks of the land being occupied by Felda sit on NCR (Native Customary Rights) properties which by right are supposed to have been passed on by their owners to their children and grandchildren. Hence, Felda's illegal occupation of land in Sabah is also in defiance of Adat, the first Constitution of Sabah recognised by the 1963 Malaysia Agreement, and the state and Federal Constitutions.

The tragedy of Sabah began during the time of the then Berjaya Government under Chief Minister Mohd Harris Salleh (1976 to 1985) who was virtually led by the nose by the Federal Government.

Felda Sabah is among the most heinous crimes of the Federal Government in Sabah along with, among others, allowing illegal immigrants to take over the state, the virtual theft of oil and gas resources and non-compliance of the Malaysia Agreement of 1963.

The heinous plots against the people of Sabah began in 1976 shortly after a tragic June 6 air crash which took the lives of Chief Minister Donald Aloysius Marmaduke Stephens @ Mohd Fuad Stephens, his son, three of his state cabinet ministers, an assistant minister, and five others in an explosive fireball over the beach along Sembulan in Kota Kinabalu. Even Stephens converting with his entire family on 5 Jan 1971 from Roman Catholicism to Islam did not help save them.

The moment Stephens was gone

Stephens, the Huguan Siou (Paramount Chief) of the Natives, was British-Kadazan (urban Dusun) on his father’s side and British-Japanese on his mother’s side.

Harris, then Deputy Chief Minister, tearfully stepped into his late leader's shoes almost immediately and within days ostensibly signed over the state's oil and gas resources in perpetuity to the Federal Government. Stephens had earlier refused to sign over the oil and gas resources and, if unavoidable, held out first for 30 per cent royalty, then at least 20 per cent. Harris was forced, virtually at gun-point, to settle for the 5 per cent the Federal Government offered.

Away from that little digression to better illustrate that the Federal Government is beyond redemption, Felda's Hidden Agenda to indulge in massive theft of land in Sabah began in 1979.

By an Agreement with the state government in that year, Felda pledged to develop land settlement schemes in Sabah for the local people, not illegal immigrants as it later transpired. In return, the Sabah Government initially made available 200,000 acres in Kinabatangan, later another 50, 000 acres in Kinabatangan/Lahad Datu, and finally another 56,000 acres in the same region.

Less than 7% developed

The Federal Agency, according to Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) lawyer Kong Hong Ming who is currently leading a probe into Felda Sabah, developed less than seven per cent of the acreage allocated to it i.e. for less than 1,500 settlers with each working 14 acres.

In 1990, under the fig leaf of the Federal Government saving on providing basic infrastructure and facilities within the land schemes, Felda Sabah unilaterally frustrated and/or breached the Agreement with the state government. By that time, the Berjaya Government had fallen a good five years earlier at the hands of the giant-killer Parti Bersatu Sabah (PBS).

The agency not only went solo on the agreement but refused to hand back the undeveloped land to the state government for re-distribution to its original owners. All the more so since the state was now under PBS and headed by a Native Christian Chief Minister in the person of Joseph Pairin Kitingan who pulled out his party in that year from the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN).

As per the 1979 Agreement, Felda had agreed to establish the Selection Committee to manage the selection and engagement of settlers for the settlement scheme. Felda was required to appoint at least two members representing the Sabah State Government as members of the Selection Committee consisting of a total of four members with a Felda member as its chairman.

Felda had also agreed that a settler selected by the Selection Committee shall be entitled to, amongst other things, be engaged in the development and maintenance of the allocated land subject to payment of wages and dividends. Felda was required to provide a housing plot of land to each settler and his family together with a dwelling house built on it within the residential land of the scheme.

Instead, after setting aside the 1979 Agreement, Felda has virtually created an unofficial Federal Territory in Sabah by building its own security force to control movement in and out of the land it has since usurped in the state from thousands of poor Natives who had been looking forward to a better life.

FT Sabah not Felda Sabah

The “Federal Territory” run by Felda has its own power plants and piped water supplies when, ironically, nearby villagers live in the dark and have to trudge daily to the nearby rivers to do all their washing and cleaning and fetch water for cooking.

Felda has been developing the said land in Sabah on its own into huge oil palm plantations with no thought for the original land owners and without including them. There are no prizes for guessing exactly who is working in these huge Felda estates since the area is a magnet for illegal immigrants who can enter and leave the “Felda Federal Territory” with impunity.

The capital of the Felda-run “Federal Territory” is the teeming illegal immigrant-infested township of Tungku in the Lahad Datu District. Here, one would not be able to guess at all that it was still Sabah.

An Opposition-led state government in Sabah has pledged to terminate the 1979 Agreement with Felda, citing breach and/or frustration.

Other Agreements the Opposition is looking at are the so-called 1976 Oil Agreement between the Sabah and Federal Government, the handover of Labuan to the federal Government and the 1963 Malaysia Agreement which has also bee in breach and/or frustrated.

Strangely, the state government does not have a copy of the 1976 Oil Agreement and one theory making the rounds along the grapevine is that the said Agreement in fact does not exist. That would open the proverbial Pandora’s Box in Sabah.

Malaysia Chronicle