"Pak Electoral Process in disarray", from WaPo

[Saddle Bronc 124]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...7092301174.html

Pakistani Electoral Process in Disarray, Observers Warn

By Griff Witte

Washington Post Foreign Service

Monday, September 24, 2007; Page A20

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- With their country in turmoil, Pakistani voters are expected within months to go to the polls for the first parliamentary elections here in five years. But as time runs short, independent observers say that the nation is poorly prepared and that the elections will be highly vulnerable to fraud.

The most glaring weakness, they say, is a new voter list that is missing the names of tens of millions of Pakistanis, threatening to seed mass confusion over who is eligible to cast a ballot.

Creation of the list was heavily funded by Washington. It was to be the signature U.S. contribution to the election process.

"The very hard-earned money of U.S. taxpayers was used for this. But that money was not well spent," said Ahmed Bilal Mehboob, executive director of the nonprofit Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency. "This could severely jeopardize the quality of the elections."

Last month, Pakistan's Supreme Court agreed, ordering the Election Commission to go back and try to identify the missing names so they could be added to the rolls. But those involved say that the fix could do more damage and that the result could be a free-for-all, with the various political parties competing to rig the polls.

"The door is now open to the same kind of fraudulent voting as we've had in the past," said one international elections expert in Pakistan who was not permitted to speak for the record. "It's unfortunate because all of it could have been avoided."

Observers generally do not blame the United States for the failure. But they say U.S. officials erred in trusting the Election Commission of Pakistan, the organization responsible for implementing the upgrade. The commission, whose members are handpicked by President Pervez Musharraf, has a reputation for incompetence and for lacking independence from the president. The commission has enabled Musharraf to go ahead with his plans for reelection in the face of several legal challenges.

Musharraf, a general who seized power in a 1999 coup, is seeking another five years as president through a vote to be held before the national elections. That vote, scheduled for Oct. 6, will be conducted by the outgoing Parliament and provincial assemblies, which were themselves elected in flawed balloting that favored Musharraf. The president's critics say the sequencing of the elections is inherently unfair.

Still, the stakes in the voting for Parliament are high. The outcome will determine who becomes Pakistan's prime minister, the official with day-to-day control of the government. Even if Musharraf wins a new term as president, his authority could be seriously eroded if his party receives scant public support.

Meanwhile, a recent International Crisis Group report said "rigged or stalled elections would destabilize Pakistan, with serious international security consequences."

The U.S. budget for election assistance in Pakistan is $28 million. In July, Richard A. Boucher, assistant secretary of state for South Asia, told Congress that $20 million had gone toward supporting the Election Commission's work and that U.S. officials were "doing everything we can to support free and fair elections."

The single largest contribution to that effort has been the $10 million the United States spent on computerizing the new voter rolls, a program that officials broadly defend, while acknowledging problems.

"The new computerized electoral rolls are the most accurate voters' list that Pakistan has produced, although the list is not yet complete," said Anne Aarnes, director of the U.S. Agency for International Development in Pakistan.

Election Commission officials did not respond to repeated requests for comment on the rolls.

Aarnes pointed out that the United States has also spent money on efforts not related specifically to the Election Commission, including support for election monitoring by local groups and training for journalists who will cover the election.

But Pakistani democracy advocates say that funding for those programs is comparatively small and that they had repeatedly told the United States and other international donors that focusing so much aid on the Election Commission was a waste.

"We warned them about what has now happened," said Zafarullah Khan, executive director of Pakistan's Center for Civic Education. "But donor countries were too cautious about annoying Musharraf."

Since 2001, Washington has been one of Musharraf's most stalwart supporters, providing Pakistan with $10 billion in aid -- most of it for the military. The United States has continued to back Musharraf this year, even as his popularity within Pakistan has dwindled.

The effort to create a new voter list began last summer, after Pakistani officials determined that the rolls used during 2002 parliamentary elections were so inaccurate they could not be reused. The new, computerized list would begin from scratch.

The Election Commission dispatched thousands of schoolteachers to go door-to-door distributing registration forms, then sent the teachers out again to collect them. But at the end, officials discovered they had only about 52 million names -- 20 million fewer than in 2002. With population growth, experts had expected the number of names to rise, not fall, and many say they believe 30 million or more names are missing from the new rolls.

"The whole methodology adopted by the Election Commission was flawed," said Sarwar Bari, who leads Pakistan's Free and Fair Elections Network, a pro-democracy nonprofit group.

For one thing, Bari said, it was a mistake to have people fill out the forms themselves in a country where half the population is illiterate. Furthermore, in some cases, the absence of some names may have been no accident at all.

"My name, my wife's name and my daughter's name were all missing from the rolls," Bari said.

Opposition political groups have charged that this is just another episode in a long history of attempts by Pakistani governments to rig the polls before election day. The Pakistan People's Party, led by exiled former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, has said that nearly half the voters listed on the 2002 rolls from her home town of Larkana were absent from the new rolls.

The opaque nature of the Election Commission has only heightened suspicions. The commission has routinely refused to meet with civic groups or political parties, according to members of both groups. It has also declined to allow anyone to monitor the data-entry process.

While the Supreme Court has intervened to try to get the rolls fixed, the proposed solution -- merging the 2002 and 2007 lists while lowering identification standards -- could create even more problems. "Now I'll be able to add my name three or four times," Bari said.

Meanwhile, many voters who think they are registered may be disappointed on election day. Qasim Jan, a 28-year-old vendor in the northern city of Peshawar, said he would like to vote but doesn't think he will get the chance because he was never told he needed to fill out a new form. "I leave home early in the morning and return after sunset," Jan said. "Nobody ever asked me to register my name."

Khan, head of the civic education group, wonders whether that wasn't the point all along.

"Such disappointments help dictatorships," he said.

Special correspondent Imtiaz Ali in Peshawar contributed to this report.

A brief history: the last validated election in Pakistan was in 1947, leading to a Prime Minister who served till Oct. 16, 1951 (when he was bumped-off).

The next time the nation actually had a fair (though not upheld) election was in 1970. The military, then holding power under Yahya Khan, refused to yield power to the voted-in government of Mujibur Rehman leading to rebellion by the East Pakistanis (who had voted him in due to their anger against the West-dominated military in the first place) and their formation of a new country, Bangladesh--with help from India which Yahya stupidly "invited" into the conflict (well, considering that he was stupid enough to order soldiers to attack the police station at Razar Bagh and a paramilitary barracks at Pilkhana, both in Dhaka...).

When chopf#ck war-criminal Zia siezed power, no elections were held until he was bumped-off by his AVCOS Mirza Aslam Beg (who turned out to be content to be "power-behind-throne"). Musharraf, who is of the same ethnic group as Beg, but possibly with less street-smarts, wanted the throne itself in 1999--and took it; he's managed to stick around by dropping high-level officers of other groups, though that is a dangerous strategy as Pakistan's military is (unlike India's) dominated by Punjabis (Musharraf and Beg are mohajirs).

RAW (India's intelligence service) will need to be very watchful, as Musharraf is highly likely to try some stunts to hold power (his "pledge" to give up ACOS post after he's elected alone proves that he's planning on duplicating at least one of Yahya's foolish moves--that of refusing to yield power if he loses election).