Anwar speaking to reporters at the party headquarters.
Opposition leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim has accused the Prime Minister's Office of being responsible for chartering flights for a large group of foreigners to fly in to the peninsula from Sabah and Sarawak to vote.
Claiming to have a copy of an e-mail between top executives in an airline company implying that officers in the PMO were behind the charter, Anwar alleged that the foreigners would be ferried to various constituencies in the peninsula to vote in favour of Barisan Nasional.
He told reporters at the party headquarters here yesterday that there were as many as 16 chartered flights a day starting from April 25 and departing from Kuching, Kota Kinabalu, Sandakan, Miri and Sibu.
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“Based on our calculation, as many as 4,500 people are being transported via the flights into KL International Airport (KLIA) each day. This means at least 40,500 dubious individuals have and are still entering via this method of chartered flights via KLIA,” he said.
Although Anwar did not mention the involvement of Malaysia Airlines (MAS), his office provided purported evidence to journalists of a flight manifest bearing the airlines' logo.
This figure, he further alleged, did not include the sudden surge in arrivals of foreigners from Thailand, Cambodia, Pakistan and Myanmar through Bukit Kayu Hitam as well as those from Indonesia via Port Klang and other coastal entry points.
Anwar also claimed they deduced that those flying in from Sabah and Sarawak were foreigners based on the flight manifest and “foreign-sounding” names in the passenger list.
He also demanded that the authorities explain if Territorial Army camps and immigration depots were being used as accommodation for these “foreign phantom voters”.
“We warn the Election Commission and its cohorts that there are many patriotic Malaysians in various security agencies, airlines and airports who are angry and upset that the country's sovereignty is being compromised.
“They are monitoring and documenting all the suspicious movements of this group. We have video recordings, photographic evidence and documents to support our claims. We also have the flight schedule of these chartered flights,” he said.
Bersih co-chairman Datuk Ambiga Sreenevasan called for MAS to provide clarification on rumours that five of its airplanes had been chartered to ferry Malaysians from Sabah to vote in certain parts of the peninsula as purported by some blogs on the Internet.
Meanwhile, Anwar dismissed a question on the U-turn by Azlan Mohd Lazim, who is now insisting that his son Saiful Bukhari was indeed sodomised.
“Where are you from? Only the Umno media is interested in this,” he snapped at a journalist.
