It is not surprising that Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak, despite earlier criticisms of empire- building, should continue to call for the global expansion of Felda with new schemes in Africa without the ownership and control of Felda being delegated to the settlers themselves.
This has happened because the ideology of Felda for the creation of modern land settlement communities for the landless, under their individual ownership and control, as enunciated within Abdul Razak’s ‘Red Book’ provisions, has been betrayed.
Razak believed Felda would be a break through to spearhead the alleviation and eradication of abject rural poverty.
The Felda model of bottom-top development was internationally highly commended and, in fact, published in rural development journals particularly in the Third World. Indeed, on the basis of my own research, I wrote my dissertation and subsequently led two well-attended and debated Malaysian seminars at Cornell on Felda when I was a Fulbright Visiting Professor.
Subsequently, the National Unity Ministry requested a UNDP social impact assessment report on Felda and I happened to undertake this study in (2002.
The findings clearly showed that Felda had totally abandoned and deviated from the goals and aspirations of settler development and now existed as a bureaucratic consortium of share holders without the shared ownership, control or involvement of the settlers
Therefore, it is an indictment on the government that such a situation should have come into being where there have also been many recorded instances when Felda has functioned as a ‘pagar makan padi’ (betrayer) to the extent of the worst-case scenario of the court upholding a case where settlers were blatantly cheated by Felda (another case is pending).
As we move into the new year, all Malaysians can only hope that the government takes immediate steps to de-construct and reconstruct Felda as the ‘flagship’ for the eradication of poverty as was intended in its ideology.
Otherwise all talk of a ‘1Malaysisa’ would be meaningless.
