The British estate owners gave the eight acres of land now known as Kampong Buah Pala (KBP-High Chaparral ) as a parting gift to the ancestors of the present residents for their toil and sweat on the estate. The Indians have been residents on this entrusted land for nearly 200 years now. Even with Merdeka, these Indian Malaysians still did not get what was entrusted to them.

Their land seems to have lost the trust placed on it. In our country we have Malay Reserves, Chinese Settlements, Indian Settlements etc. Can a Malay Reserve or even a recent settlement of Indonesians suffer this fate of the Indians? It can never happen because there will be riots. Why because it is not right to deprive people of what belongs to them. But it can happen to a minority population without any qualms? Because justice is not applicable to them being a minority community. This is not 1 Malaysia or People First or Performance First that we are now being bombarded daily with by the media.

2. Coming to the alienation of the land, a few senior government servants in Penang saw this precious pearl of land without any proper title. So they discreetly and deceitfully alienated the land to the Penang Government Officers Co-operative Society Bhd in 2005 depriving these poor KBP residents of their only stake of nearly 200 years. It was as easy as ABC because the residents are ignorant and poor. Gerakan being a multi-racial party should have taken care of the interests of all Malaysians. But it did not. The irony is that a co-operative institution was used as a middleman leverage thereby going against the very core of the co-operative Principles and Philosophy. A co-operative’s basic role is to help the poor and needy from being exploited by the rich and mighty. Its primary duty is to get rid of the middlemen so that its members get a fair deal for their goods and services. But here the co-op has become the middleman for Nusmetro Ventures to exploit the poor for the benefit of the rich and powerful.

3. The interesting point is the land was alienated to the co-op in 2005 but the final premium was paid only in March 2008. According to the National Land Code, the full premium must be paid within the limitation period failing which the alienation is annulled. This whole episode is full of deceit and fraud with the declared premium being reduced to half etc. Yet our sterling MACC can state that there is no irregularity or abuse. The whole deal is corrupt and therefore ultra vires. The stunning part of this episode is our Federal Court judgment that says that the residents of KGP have no title to this land and are squatters. All the government systems and bureaucracy were against these helpless residents because they are poor and powerless. The governments i e BN and Pakatan are supposed to help the disadvantaged but they took advantage of the ignorance and innocence of the residents. The irony is that the vested interest groups can today call the residents greedy and unreasonable. The real greedy and unreasonable people are the vultures who carved this deal deceptively and corruptly from the people who have occupied the land for 200 years. Any decent government anywhere in the world would have alienated the land to the residents as they are users of the land. Besides this, it would have been a step forward for the Indian community to increase its corporate/land wealth from its miserable 1% in the country, that all Malaysians deplore, to at least 5% that the BN government has promised MIC.

4.Now the solution for this fiasco. We know that land alienation is a state matter. Let the Pakatan government revoke this deal on the premise of deceit and fraud and refund the premium to the co-op. Let MACC assign new officers to sincerely and faithfully re-investigate the matter from its origin to bring justice to these residents. The land can be proportionately re-alienated to the residents. The state government should get the best legal brains to sort this out amicably in the name of justice and dharma. Since the land alienation process has been shrouded with fraud from the beginning, then there is no legal title to the land now. Some people have said the residents are rude and unreasonable. We must empathize with them. As a senior citizen (am not a politician), I know that only those who suffer know the extent and intensity of the pain. Some vested interest group has told the Pakatan government that it will lose the business community’s votes in the next general election.

Let us remember that in any country, it is the low and middle income group that decides the government as they are invariably more than 70% of the voters especially in developing countries. So Pakatan, please use your thinking cap. Even the BN federal government is telling Penang excos to use their powers to resolve this matter. So do it without fear or favour. The people will be with you if you do the right thing.