In the just concluded Pengkalan Pasir by-election, PAS had claimed that the results have been tainted by 3,000 phantom voters.

This is a very serious allegation and I wonder whether the party has the proof to substantiate its claims. A 'phantom voter', I believe, is either not a resident of the area or is not connected in any way to the area.

If a person is not a resident of the area, this would mean that he/she is registered in another constituency but somehow is able to vote in this constituency too, or that he/she is not on any previous list and has just registered in Pengkalan Pasir, i.e. a new voter, or he/she was registered somewhere else before this election but has 'shifted' to Pengkalan pasir just prior to the elections.

In the first instance, it should not be possible because that would mean the person would appear on the Election Commission rolls twice.

In the second, new voters can be checked easily against the previous elections' list. And finally, if voters had been shifted around, the opposition should be able to flag it by the use of a simple programme to detect changes in the electoral database.

(However, from reports of the superbly organised busloads of voters being brought in to vote, and the very high turnout, I would tend to believe that all is not what it seems.)

PAS, please do us all a favour and spend some time and effort to do your homework. Come up with facts and figures preferably addressed as I have analysed it and take the EC to court instead of just whining. If not we will hear the same hard-luck stories being told at every lost election.