Sunday, March 29, 2009

APOMM for Tanjung Bunga Residents Association

This blog entry will be a special feature for Tanjung Bunga Residents Association. Someone left a comment for me about the "Coffee Party TBRA" in Penang.

I will be glad to help anyone who approaches me to highlight issues.

Personally, I spent some time reading through the mess in Tanjung Bunga. I am not sure if Gerakan has responded because the accusations seem to direct to them partially for the poor decision making on hillside projects.

According to the videos I watched and comments from various independent blogs, the hillside project in Tanjung Bunga is highly dangerous.



Engineers might be able to solve the solution but in the meantime, it is claimed that the acceptable gradient of the hillside slope for development projects is approximately 20-25 degrees.

The current development in Tanjung Bunga is at a hillside with a gradient of 60 plus. That is approximately 2.5 - 3 times the acceptable standards.

TBRA representatives have voiced their unhappiness because the DAP led Penang Government was not elected into power with a blank cheque.

They requested that DAP reps put in efforts to call off the hillside projects there by giving them their votes. It was a form of conditional voting, a part and parcel of democratic rights.

Given that we have so many professional lawyers - whether qualified or not - I wonder why no one is helping the Tanjung Bunga residents.

After the Perak Constitutional crisis, there were thousands of bloggers and commoners who claim that the Sultan had erred, which I disagree by the way. (Raja Adil Raja Disembah , An Open Letter to Datuk Seri Nizar Jamaluddin)

Many were not even qualified lawyers and some are just half past six lawyers who say one thing but perform another.

Remember Tommy Thomas - the claimed Constitutional expert from Pakatan? Read more HERE.

Since we have so many experts out there, I wonder which blogger or rakyat will step forward and help the Tanjung Bunga residents with their "legal knowledge and skills" ?

I checked through the cases and points raised. It seems that Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng said that there is nothing Penang Government can do due to contractual agreements with the developers and compensation amounts involved.

I am not really a legal expert, but by the Constitution of Penang, the Executive Government can acquire private land.

If the State Government can make an attempt to buy over the piece of land, then wouldn't that put the developers in a dilemma because they cannot build on land which does not belong to them?

Lawyers, Constitutional experts and property rights legal advisors can email me directly at manifestogwl@gmail.com . A copy of the Penang State Constitution can be found HERE.

TBRA can be assured that I will step in and blog more to help out.


(Credits to Daylife and TBRA for the pictures)

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Kudos to you for highlighting the Tanjung Bunga issue.

The former Barisan Nasional government must be held accountable.

I would like to see you take them to task.

Also, maybe you can throw in some advice to the Pakatan Rakyat government on how to avoid the pitfalls of the previous government.

Jimmy Tham said...

0.o I don't see any sentence in the post putting the blame on previous administration but rather this post talks about the inaction of LGE and DAP.

Buying of lands and forcing developers to negotiation table is possible but state gov will face the risk of counter suit from developer stating possible loss of income from the lost of the land and cancellation of development project, they are getting their money back in one way or another.
The moment something unfortunate happen, heads will role ultimately and some quarter would cry foul and ask for a royal commission which ironically its recommendation will be swept aside after some time.

Different people with differing view on whether the sultan has erred on his responsibilities so I shall not comment on that and like what the author had claimed, different experts came up with different conclusion, if one could cite a conflicting statement from pro-PR expert, others could cite a the same from a pro-BN expert.

Jimmy Tham said...

In light of the current by elections in malaysia, let's focus on another issue which I don't quite agree with.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RX8in2voMl0

Proposed increased in the number of dam in Sarawak.

When one criticises the shortcoming of LGE and his infant state government, let's talk about another state government and although a little distant from us geographically and culturally, they are still Malaysians after all.

Anonymous said...

spam!!!! hail anwar.. hail PR