Phantom voters being flown in from Sabah?

A covert operation is rumoured to be underway to ferry individuals from Sabah to Selangor and Johor by late night unscheduled charter flights in time for the May 5 polls.

PETALING JAYA: Speculations are rife that the government has chartered five aircraft from the Malaysian Airlines System Bhd’s charter division MAS Charter to facilitate a covert operation to fly Malaysians from Sabah to the peninsular in time for the May 5 general election.

Sources said the operations had begun on April 24 and an aircraft engineer had been seconded to oversee the maintenance of these unscheduled flights.

Sources here claimed that of the five planes that have been charted, three are Boeing B747 and two Airbus A330s.

According to sources, the A330 planes can hold about 300 passengers while the B747 can ferry 350 passengers.

It is also rumoured that these flights will each be making two and three trips a day respectively.

This means that the B747 alone will be able to ferry 2,100 passengers, and the A330, some 1,200 passengers a day.

In total between April 24 and May 4 (the end of the charter) an estimated 36,300 individuals will have arrived in KLIA and in Johor international airport in time for the May 5 general election.

All these flights are scheduled well after midnight and into the wee hours of the morning.

The hush-hush manner of the operations has raised questions and curiosity on the social media.

It’s a known fact that Barisan Nasional is facing a pivotal general elections and is desperately seeking to tip the scales in its favour.

And Sabah is the coalition’s famed fixed deposit of legalised illegal immigrants. Sabah has some 1.3 million illegal immigrants who hold Mykads and are now Malaysian citizens courtesy of former premier Dr Mahathir Mohamad administration’s Project IC agenda in the 1990s.

Speculation is rife that these 36,300 “voters” will be placed in “borderline” constituencies in Selangor and Johor.

Selangor, BN’s crown jewel, was wrested by opposition Pakatan Rakyat in the 2008 general election. The state has 22 parlimentary and 56 states seats.

Pakatan has mounted an all-out assault on Umno’s fortress in Johor.

Johor has 26 parliamentary and 56 state seats.