"I did not violate the constitution and the law of this land,” the General Saheb grandly declared ( Nov 11) nine days after he imposed emergency and installed a chief justice of his choice at the dead of night. He is unwilling to fix a date for lifting of emergency though. "The emergency has to be lifted but I can't give a date. We are having a difficult situation, so I cannot give a date," he says.

Yet, Musharraf is keen to win respectability, nay credibility. That much becomes clear from his opt repeated promise to doff of uniform. Where on earth is there a president who heads the army as its chief well past the retirement age, cobbles up a King’s party, and remains its patron with no inhibitions and gets elected while in uniform by Parliament whose life has almost ended?

Democracy is like Chinese cuisine. It acquires local taste, always. Yet, only the credulous will believe Pakistan President, Pervez Musharraf’s promise of clean elections to Parliament and provincial assemblies by January 9 under a caretaker government. Since Pakistan was carved out of India in 1947, civilian and military governments have continued to take turns roughly in succession of about 10 years. 1947-58, 1972-77 and 1988-99 were the civilian decades. The military cycle was from 1958 to 69, from 1977 to 88 and from 1999 to 2002. The last phase coincided with the emergence of Pervez Musharraf's as a quasi-military ruler. And it continues till date.

No one can explain why Pakistan’s experiments with democracy have not reached fruition", remarks Syed Sharfuddin, a senior Pak diplomat, who had worked with the Commonwealth Secretariat. Moeed Yusuf, a research fellow at the Strategic & Economic Policy Research (Islamabad) points out, "Virtually all parties in the country are either dynastic in nature or are propped –up by the establishment".

Mohammad Waseem, author of 'Democratisation in Pakistan based on 2002 elections, says politicisation of the bureaucracy, coercion of rival politicians, manipulation of electoral process and the use of state machinery in pursuance of 'desirable' results gradually became part and parcel of the conduct of elections in his country.."

This is reason why Lisa Curtis, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, opines that the credibility of the democratic process leading up to the general elections and the handling of the elections themselves will determine the country's future. International Crisis Group (ICG) shares her perception.

Dawn's correspondent Amir Wasim, who had covered several elections, says rigging takes place systematically and scientifically. It all begins with the selection of officers for receiving nominations of candidates and staff for manning the polling stations. There are instances even in Lahore where a woman presiding officer effectively handed over control of a polling station to her husband.

The scope for rigging in women booths is great. Majority of the women do not have their photographs on their identity cards. Also, normally women polling agents cannot recognise all the voters. It means that they can easily be dodged.

Another malpractice is changing ballot boxes or stuffing bogus votes after switching off electricity supply in the closing hours of polling. "Sometimes, the police officials claimed that there was a threat of an attack on the polling station and, therefore, they had been directed by the authorities to shift the ballot boxes to a safer place. In this way, the policemen easily changed ballot boxes during the shifting", Wasim wrote in his daily two years back; his report has not been contradicted so far. "Most incidents of stuffing bogus votes occur during the transportation phase. By stopping en-route on the pretext of prayers or food, the boxes are stuffed by abettors already in waiting".

Now, two other practices unique to Pakistan. One registering a person at more than one polling booth. Second police constables stamping ballot papers under the garb of guiding illiterate voters. “An election in a rural constituency is between two feudals, and that is reason why the result makes no difference to the quality of life of the rural population", wrote, the Dawn editorially (June 12, 2007).

Power brokers dominate the Pak scene at all levels. It is a characteristic of Pakistan's democracy, remarks Syed Sharfuddin. He dubs them as the four –pillars of Pakistan. They are: ministries and their bureaucrats at the federal level, military which espouses the philosophy of its manifest destiny, mullahs, who have the street power and the radical vote, and tribal leaders, landlords and industrialists, who, in Sharfuddin's view, are 'an extension of feudal families which once ruled Pakistan'.

Pulpit power wields great influence in Pak society. Amongst the clerics, quite a large number are influenced and at times depend on the secret agencies or the local administration. This proximity is often invoked in rural areas to get a Fatwa decreed against political opponents.

MANAGING WATCHDOG BODIES: The military-civil bureaucracy courts the observers from international bodies like the European Union and the Commonwealth. Obviously, they value the international legitimacy the monitors can give with their reports. "We take extra care of them", a highly placed source in Islamabad said.

How? Firstly, the local administration ensures that nothing incriminating comes to notice in the areas visited by the international observers. Secondly, in a tactical move, no restrictions are placed on their movement officially. What if the observers notice an electoral abuse?

Pak authorities believe that a few incidents will, indeed, strengthen 'our case of election transparency'. They also know that the international observers are concerned about form and not the process, and above all with just voting and counting.

They don't appear to be wide off the mark. At the end of 2002 elections, while domestic observers pointed to numerous irregularities, the United States was quick to give the elections a clean chit. The State Department spokesman said Washington accepted the election results as being 'a credible representation of the full range of opinion' in Pakistan. John Cushnahan, head of the 80-strong European Union Election Observation Mission (EUEOM) saw many positive developments in the election. He particularly appreciated lowering of voting age from 21 to 18 years and setting aside seats for women in national and provincial assemblies.

Undoubtedly, the overseas observers had failed to notice 'systematic abuse' of the poll process. That was left to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), a NGO. The malpractices and abuses, the HRCP had listed read like the manual on rigging elections and should be welcome as a handbook for any ruling party anywhere in the world.

RIGGING MANUAL: Making duplicate ballots and ballot boxes is not a big deal in Pakistan. Ballot papers are printed on cheap paper and by outsourcing to cheap printing presses. These ballots don't carry any security marks. Ballot boxes are procured from local manufacturers. The names of these printers and box manufactures are public knowledge. They supply 'additional' material for a price. And switching ballot boxes is a child's play. It is done on the way to a counting centre.

Ghost polling booths is a uniquely Pak phenomenon. What the authorities do is they either give a wrong address or insert deliberate mistakes in the address of a polling station. The basic purpose is to deprive voters in a particular area of their franchise.

Secret services play their own mischief in multiple ways. 'Plucking' popular persons to join the ruling party with promise of suitable reward, kidnapping a candidate to prevent him from filing nomination papers, positioning loyal bureaucrats and police in key positions from the local to the federal level, smear campaign against marked opposition stalwarts, encouragement to yellow journalism, leaking juicy scandals gleaned from wire tapping and surveillance of the opposition and allotment of unpopular election symbols are some of these 'documented' practices, which had paid dividends in successive proforma exercises at elections.

Under the rules in vogue, the electoral rolls should be prepared on the basis of identity cards. These computerised cards are issued by National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra). At the time of local bodies' elections in August 2005, also, the poll body faced lot of flak not only for the rolls that were prepared but also for the delay in announcing the results. Even now, ECP and Nadra are in the firing line.

Commenting editorially, the sedate Karachi daily, The Dawn, said, (Aug 29, 2005) "Trust deficit has always characterised the operations of the Election Commission. The delay in declaring the results can only lend weight to the view that some kind of political engineering was underway"

Both the local bodies' election and the 2002 general election were marked by lacklustre campaign and complaints of widespread rigging and other malpractices. The International Crisis Group, ICG, Brussels, holds the view that every election in Pakistan has been 'deeply flawed'. Like Field Marshal Ayub Khan and Gen Zia-ul-Haq before him, Musharraf relied on 'electoral rigging' besides 'constitutional manipulation' to retain power, it says.

Musharraf stuck to the 'rigging' manual almost to the last word faithfully in the local bodies’ elections held in 2005. Now do we expect a different fare from the General?

Says Left intellectual and journalist Khaled Ahmed, “Democracy will not work in Pakistan unless it gives up its zero-sum confrontation with India”. Any two opinions?

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