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Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi has launched the Northern Corridor Economic Region (NCER) masterplan. The masterplan was designed by Sime Darby although the project will be implemented by a regional coordinating authority.

But Sime Darby is not a disinterested party. It is eyeing the seed market and planning to produce patented “mother seed” for 10 popular crops, which it wants to sell, along with fertilisers, to the farmers. Not only that, it will buy the farmers’ produce, process it and market it via Tesco (in which Sime Darby has a 30 per cent stake).

When I contacted Jeyakumar Devaraj for comment, he told me, “It boggles the imagination that the government has come to the stage of contracting out the planning for poverty alleviation to a corporation whose primary aim is to maximise profits for shareholders.”

He said that smaller farmers could end up being pushed out or turned into agricultural labourers. Those who cannot afford to buy the expensive feed/fertilisers and don’t have economies of scale will end up losing their land. They might end up as casual labourers or be forced to move to urban areas.

“It is the invasion of corporate capital into the agriculture sector. We can see what they have done to the plantations sector: they have brought in cheap foreign labour to suppress wages below the poverty line. The same companies are moving into the traditional peasant sector.”

He pointed to how the Jabatan Hal Ehwal Orang Asli had developed plantations on Orang Asli land in the Sungai Siput area, but these are being run by private contractors who prefer to employ Indians and Bangladeshi labourers for agricultural work, leaving the Orang Asli without their land and their work.

Sarojeni Rengam of Pesticide Action Network (PAN) was also concerned. PAN’s experience of contract farming in other Asian countries suggests that the quality of the crops in the first two years would probably be acceptable. “But after that, the produce is often rejected or bought over at reduced prices” – the excuse being failure to comply with quality control standards. QC would also be used to justify “calendar spraying” according to the time of year rather than based on the actual pest problem.

Farmers may be given credit to buy proprietary seeds, pesticides and fertilisers, but this would be deducted from harvest revenue. ‘’If the produce is rejected, the farmers would be caught in a debt trap and find it impossible to survive.’’

Charles Santiago, for his part, said Sime Darby has identified the problems but the solutions have not been well thought out. “Controlling the seeds and and reorganising rice production based on agrobusiness models will not solve the systemic problems.”

“What is clear is that Sime Darby, a government-linked company, has been given the opportunity to further its investments in the country. …(and) the parties who control the seed will also control the livelihoods of the farmers.”

This is the article I wrote for IPS:

PENANG, Jul 30 (IPS) - The Malaysian government is unveiling an economic master-plan that it hopes will “revolutionise” farming and transform the economies of four northern states.

Planners say the blueprint will raise farmers’ incomes but activists are concerned that it will instead make them more dependent on a small group of large corporations, which could take control of the entire food production chain from seed to retailing. Full article: Big top-down farm revival powered by business

A couple of days ago, a friend of mine, a pensioner, received an unusual phone call from a woman he didn’t know.

From the way he described it, it sounded like someone from a market research agency was trying to gauge public opinion and sentiment. The woman asked him if it was okay if she took 20 minutes to ask a few questions.

Among the questions:

• What do you think of the Northern Corridor Economic Region plan?
• Are you happy with your recent pension increment? (He replied no, he still finds it hard to cope with the rising cost of living.)
• What do you think of Penang Chief Minister Dr Koh’s performance?
• Who do you think would make a suitable successor?
• What do you think of Keadilan?
• What do you think of Anwar?
• Would you be comfortable with Pas ruling the country?
• Do you think Visit Malaysia Year will help the economy?
• Who do you normally vote for?

Now, my guess is that this phone call has something to do with the coming general election.

We know that during the 2004 general election campaign, two of Abdullah Badawi’s aides - an ex-banker and a political scientist - coordinated a media blitz that used the creative input of three or four advertising companies. The media campaign covered television, radio, print media, billboards and even direct mail.

They used the ad agency Leo Burnett to come up with television commercials.

The landslide BN victory was actually a triumph for these advertising agencies as well. The media campaign was designed to promote the “feel-good” factor, to market the BN “brand” image and to portray Abdullah Badawi in the best possible light.

The message and approach use varied depending on the target audience. They also used the “soft-sell” approach because they didn’t want to put off the target audience through a “hard-sell” approach, which would have been “overkill”.

Before coming up with this media campaign, I am pretty sure these ad agencies would have done their homework to find out what issues are important to which target audience. You know, focus groups, random surveys, cold call interviews with voters, opinion polls - that sort of thing. The idea is to find out what appeals to voters and what puts them off. In the minds of these agencies, it’s all about perception and how it can be moulded.

One ad agency director said after the last election that his television commercials focused “just on Malaysians talking about what they like to do, what they believe in about this country and their life, rather than politics.”

“Because Pak Lah talks about everyday things, not mega-projects,” he said. (Try telling Malaysians that today!)

“Things like education, better service from the government, improving the police, anti-corruption, dealing directly with the public.” (We know all about that now, don’t we?)

“We were successful in selling the BN’s brand and the principal product, Datuk Seri Abdullah, well. If people ‘felt good’ towards the BN I feel it was validated.”

Those quotes were from a Bernama report after the 2004 general election.

As the Malaysian Media Monitors’ Diary observed back then:

In this advertising and marketing game, voters are reduced to unsuspecting consumers whose minds should be moulded and manipulated into buying the “product.” In this game, the BN is the brand, the dacing is the brand logo, the tag line is “Excellence, Glory, Distinction”, and the emotion they are trying to create is “feel good”. The principal “product” is of course, Abdullah Badawi, and the product attributes highlighted are the images of him as an anti-corruption crusader fighting against formidable odds, a man who listens to the people, etc.

It worked, didn’t it?

Now I am wondering who first thought of those tag-lines “Work with me, not for me” and “Cemerlang, Gemilang, Terbilang“. And was it any wonder that Abdullah focussed on combating corruption and reforming the police as the main planks of his programme.

I wonder if the Barisan Nasional has already appointed its ad agencies for the coming election and if they have already begun their “market research” to find out the issues that matter to you and me so that they can better mould public opinion through their next election media blitz.

What’s going on? I am unable to access Malaysia Today, the website that has shaken up Malaysia, from up here in Penang at 7.30 pm today. It’s been like that for a few hours now. (It was back online when I checked at 10.45 pm - but downloading pages inside is still kinda slow.)

Meanwhile, I caught Minister Lim Keng Yaik, wearing his Multimedia portfolio hat, on the 8 pm news issuing a stern, blustering warning to bloggers. I didn’t quite catch what he was warning them about, but he looked suitably serious. It all looks ominous enough.

Anyway, Mustafa and I have released a statement on the implications of the interrogation of Malaysia Today webmaster Raja Petra:

Charter 2000-Aliran is deeply disturbed by recent developments that could restrict the space for freedom of expression over the Internet and curb the democratic right of bloggers to air their opinions. It is especially worrying because the Internet is one of the few avenues left for concerned Malaysians to freely express views and gain access to information that is normally not carried in the mainstream media. Full statement: Raja Petra’s interrogation: Striking fear among bloggers?