free There is a tremendous opportunity for Guan Eng to acquire the land with a ‘stroke of the pen’ by invoking section 76 of the National Land Code and return it to the villagers.


On Kg Buah Pala: A way out of the impasse

Naragan: Derek Fernandez, a leading lawyer in the country on land matters, said that “... the Penang government can take back the Kampung Buah Pala land, based on a caveat in the 99-year lease document issued by the land registrar.

I too have discovered a serious weakness in landowner Koperasi Pegawai Kerajaan Negeri Pulau Pinang Bhd and developer Nusmetro's claim on the land.
 
The lease is issued with a restriction - 'tanah yang diberi milik ini tidak boleh dipindah milik, cagar, pajak, pajakan kecil atau sebarang bentuk urusniaga’ (the land cannot be transferred, mortgaged, pawned, sub-let or used as a business instrument.)

This restriction reduces the cooperatives to an end-user as it can build houses for members only. It cannot enter into a joint venture to develop the land or sell units to third party.
 
The developer cannot claim loss of market value or gross development loss as the land cannot be developed in the first place. It (the land) has no commercial value without the state consent to develop it. Hence, with this it can be easily acquired back by the Penang government.
 
What this amounts to now is this. There opens a tremendous opportunity for Guan Eng to acquire the land with a “stroke of the pen” by invoking section 76 of the National Land Code and return it to the villagers and settle this problem once and for all.

The compensation to the cooperative will now be nowhere near the RM150 million he and his stooges have been touting all this while. The state government certainly has the resources now to pay for the acquisition.
 
The ball is clearly in Guan Eng’s court. He has been dodging all this while, we wait to see if he will dodge this one as well. The cat will soon be out of the bag.

Yuvan: If PKR is really sincere in resolving this issue, it should get the Penang state government to ‘instruct’ the developers to first withdraw whatever ‘deadline’ they have set to demolish the village and invite the developers to have a serious and meaningful discussion on the matter.

Of course, the developers had waited for more than 15 months to initiate their ‘actions’ and I am sure they can be convinced to wait for another few months while an amicable and mutually acceptable solution can be found. Instead of pointing fingers and trying to find out ‘who did what’ in the previous administration, both PKR and DAP should jointly form a high-level committee, preferably headed by the chief minister, to tackle the issue in a proactive manner.  

This high-level committee should only comprise of people who can contribute to a meaningful solution. All other people who just want to make a political mileage out of this issue should be kept out.

P Dev Anand Pillai: The Indians of Kg Buah Pala seem to have found a good shooting target in CM Lim when they should have been pointing their guns at former CM Koh, who sold the land at a dirt cheap price.

If the Penang state government were to fall, Kg Buah Pala, will be the first village to be levelled by the incoming BN government. The Indians in this village should be smart, they should demand good compensation, plots of land titled to them and new houses as part of the compensation deal before they leave the area.

It looks as though the all the Indians who were once led like "cows pulled from their noses" are now demanding that state governments fall at their feet. If that is the attitude to bring about change in Malaysia, then they might as well go back to the MIC and be proud of being known as the safe deposit box of the BN!


On Suspected A(H1N1) patients gate-crash press conference

Helpless Doctor: I refer to the call by the Ministry of Health on doctors to be vigilant in combating H1N1 in Malaysia.
 
Presently, the two companies distributing anti-viral drugs in Malaysia have run out of stock and are not even taking purchase orders since they are unsure when new stock will arrive. The Centre for Disease Control of the United States advices that antiviral therapy should be started within 48 hours of illness onset to have maximum benefit (Interim Guidance on Antiviral: Recommendations for Patients with Novel Influenza A (H1N1) Virus Infection and their Close Contacts;  May 6, 2009).
 
The Ministry of Health does have a stockpile of anti-viral drugs, but it is distributed only to selected public and private hospitals. If it is the policy of the ministry to ensure the availability of anti-viral therapy only in selected centres, can the names of these hospitals be widely publicised so that patients with suspected H1N1 infection can go directly to them and not waste valuable time being accessed in places where anti-viral treatment is not available?
 

On Lawyer says it aloud - cops killed Kugan

Maniam Sankar: I cannot believe that the prosecutor raised an objection that Kugan’s mother has no locus standi to ask for her son’s tissues and samples.
 
That legalities can be used to obscure humanitarian requests speaks of a rot of fundamental values. And the attorney-general seems to be in the vanguard of those causing the rot.


On Currents of change in the river of history

CK: Dear SKY, I think you score many good points in your comment. Young Malaysian do not usually watch TVs or read mainstream newspapers for political news. But when come to IT, everybody seems to be familiar with which website to go. All we need is to "click here, click there" and somehow landed with so many political news! And seeing one news after another, many people can feel or even see what is really happening in our country.
 
Unless you have personal interest in the government or in any BN parties, you will not blame the
government so badly. Otherwise, it is already so obvious to many that this BN government really
need to change ASAP!