THE Election Commission and Defence Ministry colluded to build four military camps before the 14th general election to help Barisan Nasional, a special audit report on the controversial land swap deals has revealed.

“Several military camps, including those in Bera, Segamat, Paloh and Hutan Melintang, were built for political purposes of relocating voters before GE14,” said the report sighted by The Malaysian Insight.

On top of that, some EC officials were also involved in advising BN on what needed to be done for the camps to be ready before military voters could be transferred there before the third quarter of 2017.

Voters’ names had to be in the electoral roll by the third quarter of the year in order to vote in the election in May.

The information is contained in a special audit report by former auditor-general Ambrin Buang.

Ambrin was tasked by Pakatan Harapan with investigating dubious deals under the previous administration, beginning with Mindef.

The report on land swap deals, done between July and December last year, will be released tomorrow when Defence Minister Mohamad Sabu tables it in the Dewan Negara.

Mohamad revealed in February that the government lost RM500 million in the land swaps.

The report said some EC officials visited the Hutan Melintang camp three times in 2017. The report lists the Hutan Melintang camp as still being under construction.

The purpose for the visits was to ensure that important elements were in place before military voters could be transferred to the new camp.

The EC also moved 1,563 voters from the Tambun and Kamunting military camps to the Hutan Melintang camp in the Bagan Datoh federal constituency ahead of GE14.

Bagan Datuk is represented by current Umno president Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, the then deputy prime minister and earlier, defence minister.

Besides Hutan Melintang, the report also detailed requests in 2016 from the political secretary to the previous defence minister for the construction of an army camp and housing for the military in the Paloh state seat in Sembrong.

The then defence minister was Hishammuddin Hussein, who remains the Sembrong MP.

The camp in Paloh was aimed at shoring up a majority of votes in the state seat which BN won by 103 votes in GE13.

But the move failed to pay off as PH’s Sheikh Umar Bagharib Ali from DAP managed to win the Paloh seat by 783 votes.

While the special audit report identified the four camps – Bera, Segamat, Paloh and Hutan Melintang –as political projects to move military voters, the report also noted that there were other land swaps motivated by profit.

Some 10 deals were unsolicited proposals from private sector companies to build camps in exchange for specific land owned by Mindef for property development.

There were 16 deals in total of which five were listed as completed, two in progress, one aborted and the rest in various stages of approval. – May 8, 2019.