Keadilan today urged the government to allow the country's four television stations to allocate some of their prime time for the opposition to air their views.

"We are challenging the Barisan Nasional government to give the opposition three minutes to air their policies. The BN government already has unlimited financial resources besides fully controlling the print and electronic media," the party's deputy president Syed Husin Ali said in a statement.

He also rapped the Election Commission (EC) for being subservient to BN by "allowing the shortest campaigning period ever in the country's general election history and perhaps in the world's."

Parliament was dissolved on March 4 for the country's 11 th general election with nomination of the candidates being called yesterday. The candidates have until March 20 - eight days - to campaign before polling on March 21.

Syed Husin says it is clear the EC is being directed by the ruling BN government in the way the former delineated constituency boundaries to the advantage of latter over the past year.

He also alleged that the EC's gazetted electoral rolls have not been properly cleaned up and 'phantom voters' are still floating around.

"We have shown proof to the EC that there are phantom voters. In Pahang, there were postal voters who were registered more than once and in Lembah Pantai, Kuala Lumpur single house addresses were used to register up to 150 voters each," he claimed.

'Haunted' sundry shop

According to local elections watchdog Malaysians for Free and Fair Elections ( Mafrel), Lembah Pantai is at the top of the list for non-existent voters with 15.73% of the total voters classified as 'phantom.'

An example cited by Mafrel is the address of a zinc-roofed sundry shop in Kampung Kerinchi, Lembah Pantai, which has 142 voters registered to its address.