New wealth: Workers finishing the foundations for a bungalow in the foreground while another house nears completion in the background at Felda LBJ in Negri Sembilan.

In Negri Sembilan, the mood is for continuity although there are small voices for change.

IT has been over 16 years but to Zainon Hassan, it’s as if it happened only yesterday when she recalls the excitement she felt at becoming a millionaire.

“I’ve never had so much money before,” gushes the 65-year-old Felda LBJ settler from Labu, Negri Sembilan.

The government had acquired land from Felda settlers in Labu and Sendayan from1996 to 1998 to develop Sepang, KLIA and the surrounding area, and Zainon and her husband, who had a six-acre plot, became “instant” millionaires, along with hundreds of other Felda settlers in the earmarked areas.

She and her husband received a total of RM1.5mil, which was given out within two years.

One of the first things the couple did when they got the money was to use a tiny portion of it – about RM12,000, she says – to go for the Haj.

Then they built a house, which she describes as sederhana (average) although it has seven bedrooms!

“I have seven children. I was thinking that with so many children, I am bound to have lots of grandchildren so I would need room,” Zainon explains.

She also bought a “nice car and a good motorbike” and gave RM20,000 to each of her children, taking care to put the money into their bank accounts. She is keeping the bank books herself as she doesn’t want them to squander away the money.

But she wasn’t done yet. She bought four terraced houses for RM150,000 each, putting two in her name and the other two in her husband’s, and rented them out. Today, those houses have doubled in price.

The enterprising Zainon also bought a plot of land to plant “some fruit and rubber trees”. And she still has “a bit” of the money from the windfall left in her savings.

Zainon admits to being the one who made all the suggestions on how to use the money and her husband (who has since died) agreed.

These days you will find Zainon in one of the shops along the main road into Felda LBJ.

Felda LBJ was named after US president Lyndon B. Johnson who visited the village in 1966. Although settlers have sold off their land and it is no longer a Felda settlement in the traditional sense, the name has stuck.

Even after becoming millionaires, a number of the former settlers have opted to remain in the village, upgrading their lives and building huge bungalows.

Zainon’s daughter has a small shop selling mobile phone pre-paid cards, snacks, drinks and other everyday items.

Most afternoons, Zainon is at the back of the shop making kuih bahulu to sell. “I can’t sit around doing nothing,” she says.

Unlike Zainon, some Felda “instant millionaires” went on wild shopping sprees and ended up penniless.

“Only a few did this. It was mostly the younger ones who got carried away and didn’t take a long term view of their finances,” she says.

As one who is grateful to the government for her wealth, Zainon, like many Felda settlers, openly declares she will vote Barisan Nasional in the general election.

“I remember the past and how tough it was when we were first starting out. Look how far we have come today so I will vote for the party who gave that to me. I won’t vote for change. My vote is for stability,” she says.

Some 100km away in Bandar Sri Jempol, Mohd Arif Sulan and Jamal Dahan from Felda Raja Alias, both in their 60s, share Zainon’s views.

When they came to the area 32 years ago, there was no “quality” running water and no electricity. Now, Felda houses in the area, they say, have not only a huge TV and fridge, but also a car or two (or three), laptops, broadband connection and people have the latest smartphones.

Their lives are pretty comfortable, so they are grateful.

“We make up the 80%. But like in any family, there are always one or two ‘bad apples’,” says Mohd Arif.

To them, the “bad apples” are settlers who throw their support behind Pakatan Rakyat.

“There are some staunch opposition supporters here and nothing we do or say will sway them.

“So, it is the fence sitters that we can appeal to,” says Jamal.

One interesting fact they point out is that the majority of the Felda settlers’ children will leave once they grow up, heading off to towns and cities to study or find good jobs and better opportunities.

“These kids of ours are getting their news from the Internet, Facebook, the blogs, and websites.

“They are reading a lot of negative things about the (Barisan) government and their minds are being shaped by what they are reading,” says a concerned Jamal.

“I feel as a father that it is my duty to advise and make them understand the good side of the government.

“If we as fathers don’t make the effort, it can become a problem later on,” he adds.

In the last election, Barisan won 21 seats and Pakatan Rakyat secured 15 in the Negri Sembilan state assembly, which some said was too close for comfort.

And as ardent a Barisan supporter as Mohd Ariff is, he thinks it is “not impossible” for Pakatan to win over the state this time because people in town areas like Seremban, Port Dickson and Bahau seem to like them.

In Port Dickson, Mas Ismail, 43, hasn’t decided who to vote for.

She says she is not really interested in politics and doesn’t know what to believe anymore because she cannot tell the “real story” from all that is being bandied around in the political sphere.

Still, this single mother does take her voting obligation seriously, and she will cast her vote.

“My vote will depend on the situation at that time when elections are called,” she says.

For her, what matters most is money and family.

“In the new millennium, everyone needs money so don’t tell me love alone is enough. You might be able to survive on love for a month or two. But after that, you are going to need money.

“I am not materialistic, just realistic,” says Mas, who was out for a barbecue on the beach with her colleagues including Zuraini Ahmad.

Zuriani says she values “quality life” with her husband and three children, aged nine, 12 and 16.

It bothers her when she hears of children going missing or being found dead. “I’d never let my nine-year-old wander off. When we go to public places, I make sure I always hold her hand,” she says.

On politics, Zuraini describes herself as neutral but she gets annoyed when each party says only “bad stuff” about the other side.

“Barisan is always saying bad things about Pakatan. Never once have they given Pakatan credit for coming up with a good thing or a good idea.

“It’s the same with Pakatan. They are forever condemning what Barisan is doing, as if Barisan has done nothing good at all.

“For ordinary people like me, all these conflicting views are confusing,” she says.

So she has decided to base her vote on whichever party she thinks has done more in her area.

Kalimuthu, 67, runs a sundry shop in Bahau and thinks “the economy is good” because his business is doing well.

All his four children are grown up. Two are doctors, one’s a teacher and the other is in college.

They have been pestering him to retire but he can’t imagine a life without working. He wishes, though, for more Chinese and Indians in the civil service in departments like Immigration.

“They shouldn’t take only one particular race for jobs,” he says.

For the elections, Kalimuthu says he will look at the candidate rather than party when making his choice.

The candidate must definitely be from Bahau because an outsider will not know the problems in the area, he says.

“He must be a good man and he must be rich. If he is a good man but has no money, it’s no use because he won’t be able to do anything for the rakyat. He must be able to help people. Who would vote in someone without money? I wouldn’t.”

For first-time voter Krishna, 24, it doesn’t matter if the candidate is not rich or is an outsider. “He just needs to be willing to help people.”

But Lim, 37, who is also from Bahau, sees no point in voting in the coming election. “Who the government is, is not important. What is important to me as a businessman is how we can ‘cover’ our lives.

“If Barisan wins or DAP wins, what can we get? We are businessmen and just want to earn a living,” he says.

It’s personal for him after what he had to go through with his snooker business in Bahau. He had opened up a snooker place incorporating “new ideas” from KL and for a while, his was THE snooker place to be.

It was going well for four years until the local council came calling and told him all snooker and entertainment centres had to be on the ground floor because “we can’t see what you are doing upstairs”.

Lim couldn’t understand the fuss because only 20km away in Kuala Pilah, and in other towns like Seremban and Port Dickson, snooker or karaoke centres were upstairs.

His reason for being upstairs, he says, is simply because it made better economic sense. The rent upstairs is half of what he’d have to pay for the ground floor.

He says he approached political parties to weigh in, even asked the OCPD for help, but the local council wouldn’t budge.

“I don’t know why they make such rules. It’s a ‘you-want-to-do-business, you-listen-to-me’ approach.”

The irony, he says, is that the local council in Bahau is fine with a snooker centre being upstairs in a shopping centre. And those are allowed to operate till 1am. “I don’t know why they have one rule for a shopping centre and another for other businesses. It doesn’t make sense.”

Lim also ended up paying rent for his upstairs snooker centre for another year-and-half although it remained closed because he had invested in the snooker tables. In the end, he opened a new centre 20km away, out of the reach of the Bahau council.

And he has just opened a restaurant in Bahau where he employs four foreign workers, paying them RM600 a month.

He says the RM900 minimum wage requirement is “ridiculous” in places like Bahau where profits and cost of living are low.

He provides food and accommodation for the four foreign workers and is amazed at how much they eat. “They eat 2.5kg of rice each day. A 10kg bag of rice that costs RM35 can only last them four days. And I am not even counting the chicken, vegetables and seafood.

“It all comes up to more than RM1,000 per person. They’ve asked me for RM900 and I said I can pay them that but then they’ll have to get their own meals and find their own place to live.”

It all adds up to why he won’t be casting his vote this time.

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