The DAP has suggested that the Election Commission (EC) proposes in Parliament next month an amendment to the Election Offences Act which will make it an offence to be a phantom voter.

The party feels that now was a good time to do so since the opposition and ruling parties have complained about the rampant nature of phantom voters and that the EC should revise the list to reflect the voter composition more accurately.

The DAP and other opposition parties have been complaining about phantom voters over the years but nothing has come out of it, except for a 1999 court case in Likas where the complainant won the petition on the basis of a rigged electoral list.

Party chairperson Lim Kit Siang said the proposal is to hold a voter registered in a constituency where he or she has no residential or work ties as having committed an offence.

He said the EC should "wake up to the fundamental flaws of the electoral list which makes it a mockery of the claim that Malaysian elections are free, fair and clean".

"The question is whether the EC has the will to clean up all phantom voters from the electoral rolls, or has only the mandate to conduct a selective clean-up of phantom voters of the opposition but not those of the BN," he said in a statement today.

Address the scam

Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad has reportedly asked the EC to revise the electoral roll nationwide on grounds that it has been manipulated in some constituencies to include phantom voters, such as in the Pendang and Anak Bukit by-elections on July 18.

Mahathir, who is Umno president, said after chairing the party's supreme council meeting late Friday that the EC must step in and address the scam as the voters' list had been rigged in order to accommodate phantom voters.

PAS won the Anak Bukit state constituency by a majority of 508 votes but lost the Pendang parliamentary seat to BN by a slim 283 votes. Both seats fell vacant upon the demise of PAS president Mohd Fadzil Noor.

Mahathir claimed that a post-mortem conducted by Umno showed that more than 500 phantom voters believed to be Pas supporters from Kedah, Terengganu, Negeri Sembilan, Johor and even Sabah and Sarawak, had been detected in four of the 14 ballot boxes for the state constituency.

As a result of the alleged manipulations, he said 1,359 Umno supporters were unable to cast their votes because their names had been removed from the Pendang parliamentary constituency list.

Six-month clean-up

Mahathir accused PAS of using the same tactic in the 1999 general election to ensure victory.

Calling for a total six-month clean-up operation by the EC, Lim said all political parties should also be included.

He said Mahathir's call for a clean-up of the electoral list, and for the EC to take the matter very seriously, was a first.

"Mahathir's allegation of PAS' rigging of the electoral list with phantom voters have still to be proven to the satisfaction of independent-minded Malaysians, although there is no doubt about the gravity of the abuse of the electoral system."

Lim added that the DAP has been criticising similar electoral malpractices for three decades, but without any results todate.

The EC could not be reached for comments.