It’s dark days ahead for Felda

Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak has read the writings on the wall and will go to any length to appease the Felda settlers because 50 seats are at stake.

COMMENT

At closing time on Monday (Sept 10) Felda Global Ventures Holding Berhad traded at RM4.68, earning the holders of the stock a premium of 13 sen per share.

If Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak hadn’t quickly come up with the brilliant idea of ordering Felda to finance settlers’ purchase, each of the 112,635 settler would end up with a RM94.70 loss.

Najib has read the writings on the wall. He knows that if he doesn’t appease the settlers, they will go up in arms against him.

What Najib is actively doing right now is fire-fighting. He forgot that all it takes is a single spark to light up the prairie fire.

At stake are the 50-over seats in Felda areas.

If shares drop further and hits RM4.55 – which economic advisor to Anak (Persatuan Anak Peneroka Felda Kebangsaan) Dr Rosli Yaakop says it will – then Felda will spend RM1.496 million to appease the 112, 635 felda.

Already Najib has given advance out bribes of RM15,000 to each to Felda family, although I hear full payments haven’t been given out yet.

He has given almost RM43 million as raya bonus. Each family got around RM382. That amount was useful to buy cookies, lemang , fresh meats and maybe new curtains for the missus.

And Najib has further upped the ante – he’s declared that Felda will pay all PTPTN loans of settlers’ children. We don’t know how much.

Najib’s every move now reveals his true character.

A number of inferences can be drawn from these quick-solve actions.

The fact that Najib has to continuously bribe settlers could mean support from settlers isn’t that solid.

The fact that Najib has decided to finance the FGV transactions and now pay for the PTPTN loans taken by settlers’ children further confirm that indeed support from the Felda people isn’t as solid as he would want everyone believe.

FGVH’s ‘real’ agenda

Then there is the “real agenda” for FGV’s listing.

Felda got RM10 billion. Najib gave Felda RM5.99 billion.

The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) got almost RM4 billion to play around to implement the principal economic strategy of Najib – giving out money to buy votes and allegiance.

Maybe all this corporate bullshit was actually about saving FGV. It has done extensive futures trading and had incurred huge losses.

So the only way to save FGV was to have it buy out KPF’s (Koperasi Permodalan Felda) share in Felda Holdings and go for listing.

We don’t know how much FGV got by selling its shares. There was no cash payment involved as the purchase was financed by the issue of new shares which were sold to the public through the IPO.

Part of the proceeds were used by Felda to pay its EPF loan amounting to RM6 billion. Then EPF was instructed to buy FGV shares. EPF now owns 7% of FGV bought for RM .2 billion.

Foreign interests are selling down to cut down losses.

It’s dark days ahead for Felda.

The writer is a former Umno state assemblyman but joined DAP earlier this year. He is a FMT columnist.