FGV is the settlers' Road to Serfdom. (1/2)

Someone wrote that FELDA settlers will eventually become estate workers. The FGV listing is the settler’s road to serfdom.

Table 1: %age and number of shares offered for sale.

per	Saham2 yang di tawarkan	Peratus(%)	Jumlah saham
1	Saham sedia ada yg di tawarkan	33.1	1,208.9 juta
2	Saham baru yang di tawarkan	26.9	980.0
3	JUMLAH	60.0	2,188.90

Table 2: allocation of FGV shares.

per	Jenis pembeli	Peratus(%)	Jumlah saham( Juta unit
1	Yang di pilih oleh MITI	11.5%	419.5
2	Pembeli institusi	41.1%	1495.8
1 +2	Jumlah	52.6%	1915.30
4	Orang awam	2.0%	73.0
5	Peneroka FELDA	2.5%	91.2
6	Kakitangan FELDA	3,0%	109.4
5+6	jumlah	5.5%	200.6
	JUMLAH KESELURUHAN	60.0%	2188.9

With a bottomless pit of scandals and irregularities, PM Najib must be off his rockers when he says he will win 14-0 in the next elections. He won the Raja Lawak competition in Melaka.

But I know, the only time he HAS to say something like that, is when he knows the chips are down. We know when Najib says he will win 14-0, it means UMNO and BN are finished. Otherwise, with a score of 14-0, Najib should have declared elections yesterday.

There’s a rumor in town, with the story that Najib went to see his personal doctor to examine the constitution of his brain. As you know, the brain is divided into 2 sides- the left side and the right side.  When the right side was examined- the doctor explained, I am afraid sir, nothing is right there. Momentarily disturbed, Najib asked-What about my left? I am afraid I have even more frightful news sir- there is nothing left there.

Let’s get back to the FGV listing for one more time. The initial idea was mooted by CIMB. Ethos Consulting was brought in as global project coordinator. They brought in the Calvary- Hay Group, Boston Consulting, Aeon Hewitt and maybe more. Najib’s current world is pretty much constructed by consultants at the moment. They provide him with the idea and he goes out there to promote what he thinks are earth-shattering ideas. By the way, if readers are interested to read about the make-believe world consultants construct, they may want to read House of Lies.

The FGV listing has all the hallmarks of becoming a minefield for Najib. An increasing number of FELDA people are becoming more skeptical by the day. It’s dawning on them; they are being deceived into believing that all this is done for their wellbeing.

Most of us laymen are interested to know- whether this listing will benefit FELDA settlers in the end. In the end- the UMNO people will go around town defending the listing by saying, settlers don’t lose anything. We are not touching your own landed property. Those people who are entitled to land titles will get theirs. The others, as soon as they pay up, will also get theirs. So there’s nothing to worry.

Where will the settlers sell their ffbs( fresh fruit bunches) ? The mills and crushing plants are now owned by FGV. They sell their produce there. The purchases will now be done more stringently. FGV mills will ensure the exact measure of extraction rate and also make sure; fruit bunches meet quality control requirements. The future is one with long drawn out frictions. Even at the time when FELDA owns all its mills and plants, settlers dispute with FELDA, what more when the mills and plants aren’t owned by FELDA any longer? There are always 3 areas of disputes and contests. Settler battle FELDA over issues of (1) extraction rate of FFBs (2) payments for replanting and (3) payments on felled rubber trees.

FGV will ditch the settlers in the end to avoid having to contend with these issues. Investors don’t want suppliers with issues and litigations. Settlers will no longer get any preferential treatment from FGV as it is now a purely private business. Settlers will find themselves as just one of the many suppliers.

The politically relevant point to me is the fact that FELDA people get only 5.5% of the 2.18 billion shares offered for sale. So there goes the pompous proclamation that we care for the FELDA folks. The FELDA people are going to pay for the shares. They have to pay almost RM4000 for 810 units of shares.  Good if they can get RM 3 premium per share. They make RM 2000 over profit. Can the price stay long at RM 7.55(giving them a RM 3 profit per share)?

The price stays long if the fundamentals are there. You can’t sustain the price artificially by casino-ing the market. The big boys will want to recoup what they spent quickly what more with the uncertain future of the Najib government.  They are jittery. The Singapore diplomats who witnessed firsthand the Bersih 3.0 recently wanted to verify things because they want to prepare for eventualities. They are pragmatic people who are not beholden to UMNO and BN for anything.

Because they also know how to read in between the lines. By the way, the origins of the expression `read in between the lines’ came about when the spies of George Washington wished to send messages to each other. They would write secret information in invisible ink in between the lines of normal written material. Recipients would have to apply some kind of chemical concoction to make the hidden messages visible.

So, when people read in between the lines, they see trouble in Pekan. Local folks in Pekan are up in arms because Najib’s people are bringing in thousands of new citizens in Pekan and giving them land. The natives have to wait generations to get titles to the land they applied. Every acre of land given up to the Khmers, the MYanmares and whoever, means one acre less for local people in Pekan. That means Najib does not trust Pekan people. He has reasons to because in 1999, the PAS candidate came within 241 votes of unseating Najib son of Abdul Razak.