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Reflections and recriminations
07/01/2006 NST-PROP By Salleh Buang


It has become customary that at the end of each year, we take stock of what we have done over the past 12 months to see where we have gone, what we have done, the mistakes we committed, what services we rendered, and so on.

We do this to tally the score; to set the record straight; to balance the accounts (in the development and environmental sense) - and to learn something. If we have done well, we deserve a pat on the back, as we need to be encouraged to do even greater things in the coming year.

If we did something particularly odious and contemptible, we should kick ourselves and swear never to do it again.

So, in line with that wholesome practice, how did we perform in 2005?

I spent the final two weeks of last month asking this question? I e-mailed friends and acquaintances in several States to assess their feelings. And, as luck would have it, I had the privilege of spending the entire daylight hours of the last day of 2005 with a group of very senior people in Kedah.

The occasion was the start of a Masters programme in land administration, which took place in the premises of the Kedah Institute of Management in Alor Star. As facilitator for this newly introduced post-graduate programme (with input from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia), it was an extremely tiring day for me, but otherwise a very fruitful encounter, having found time to exchange thoughts on the year.

In no particular order, the first regrettable thing we did in 2005 was destroy an entire green stretch of Mother Earth in the vicinity of a major agricultural park in Selangor. In the aftermath of that terrible environmental tragedy, which saw our Prime Minister taking to the sky to see for himself the destruction man caused to nature, a State agency of some repute was fined RM300,000 in court.

The quantum of the fine is not important. What is, is that nobody, even a State agency, is above the law. When you flout the law, the day of reckoning will not be too far away.

Instead of defiantly flouting the law, the agency should have set a good example for others to emulate. What is even more regrettable is that a youngish but otherwise respected and capable politician helms the agency. If such a thing had happened in the 60s or 70s, friends remind me, several heads would have rolled.

Another regrettable thing we did in 2005 was cause the destruction of a marine park in the northern part of the Straits of Malacca. In this case, general public opinion was not strong enough to prevent a State Government from carrying out a tourism-development project on a small island situated within the marine park. In that Government-sponsored questionable project, 15 “luxury chalets” were built, to the tune of RM5 million.

Again, the quantum of money spent is not that important. That is only a small amount to pay. The much bigger price - which we have not been able to tally yet - will be the damage done to the ecosystem. And there’s the yet unanswered question: Is the harm done to the marine park ecology remediable?

The morale of this particularly sad story is that our leaders should sometimes really pay heed to the gentle advice of the small man.

Another dark spot in the legal landscape of 2005 is an event that took place in a major district in the Klang Valley. In this case, what I found especially remarkable was that land alienation - a process that in many places across the nation can sometimes take as long as three decades - was achieved in the blink of an eye - or to be exact, in less than three weeks.

According to a media report, several former participants of the Federal Government’s “green revolution” programme at a village in Kapar, Klang, had been waiting for their land titles for more than 20 years.

The irony is that the same Land Office, which had not been able to do its work for these people for more than two decades, took a mere 20 days to issue land titles to a Datuk. How could this happen? Different standards for different classes of people?

Yet another red stain in the legal fabric of 2005 came via an electronic media report in late October 2005 about an inexplicably long delay in paying compensation to deprived landowners in an eastern State.

In this particular story, the State Authority compulsorily acquired alienated land in 1979 for the purpose of building a road to a well-known lake. The road works had long since been completed, but the deprived landowners, according to the report, were not compensated. Some of these owners have since died.

The inevitable question, when one is confronted with stories of such intolerable delay by the authorities, is whether the acquisition exercise had been rendered illegal, null and void? There is abundant case law that states inordinate delay as “an abuse of power, an example of mala fide”.

While no one can deny that the State Authority may have its own reasons for the delay (or its own version of the story), if indeed the delay is proven, then a terrible injustice has been done - once again, to the small man. And that should never have been allowed to happen in the first place.

I might be accused of letting some quarters off the hook if, in my analysis of last year’s depressing record, I merely point the finger at the Land Office or the State Authorities and forget others.

So, in fairness to everybody, I need to look elsewhere and apportion blame, where it lies

- or give credit, where it is due.

The spotlight has also been on the courts in 2005. In some cases, the judiciary too has disappointed us. In one particular case, a local company - well known globally for its fine rubber-based products - was hauled to court for discharging toxic effluents into the nation’s water systems.

Cogent evidence was produced. The deleterious effect on the environment is beyond doubt. Was custodial sentence meted out by the courts? No, just a fine - which the company readily paid, treating it as just a sundry expense, to be paid out of petty cash!

It reminded me of similar judicial reluctance in the past - see, for instance, the case of “Malaysian Vermicelli Manufacturers (Melaka) Sdn Bhd vs Public Prosecutor [2001] 3 AMR 3368”.

While the thought that an environmental criminal was being allowed to go virtually unpunished probably never crossed the judge’s mind, the conclusion one can draw from this sorry state of affairs is that such crimes will continue, for as long as the judiciary does not have the stomach to impose jail sentence for environmental crime.

The canvas for 2005 has generally been painted black, but there have been glimmers of hope at the edges. As we are often told, where there is life, there is still hope. So, perhaps 2006 will bring in more cheer than tears.

One bright spot for 2005 was news of an early launch for our own Urbanisation Policy. I have no knowledge as to when that will be. However, there was general expectation that, in line with the official launch of the National Physical Plan at a five-star hotel in Penang last year, we will soon have our Urbanisation Policy, which would be followed shortly after with a National Land Policy. Let us wait and see.

In retrospect, 2005 has not been a good year. There were more tears and jeers, rather than cheer. In the final account, we are more on the debit side.

Salleh Buang is senior advisor of a company specialising in competitive intelligence. He is also active in training and public speaking and can be reached at sallehbuang@hotmail.com

 

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