ALL of us in Pakistan say we want fair elections, but we know also that many of those who contest them will break the relevant law to their advantage if they can get away with it. Managers of vote banks and individual voters, who are willing to exchange votes for cash or other gifts, are also unconcerned with probity in the electoral process.

None of our elections other than that of 1970 are believed to have been free and fair. Yahya Khan and his associates did not rig that election because, having misread the ground realities, they expected that the results even of an honest election would suit them well enough. But let us not be excessively pessimistic. It is possible that, as we gain experience of democratic politics, our elections will become reasonably decent.

Opposition politicians and many other observers have the apprehension that, left to its own devices, the present regime will rig the local elections scheduled for August 18 and the general election to be held two years from now. They believe that we must have an independent election commission if we are to have at least a modicum of integrity in our electoral process. Some of them think such a commission does exist and function in India. It may then be useful to take a look at it.

The Indian election commission consisted of a chief election commissioner, assisted by two members as needed from time to time, until 1993 when these two were added on a permanent basis. Since then it has decided matters by majority vote. The commission is charged with scheduling, organizing, and supervising elections to the central and provincial legislatures, the upper house of parliament, and offices of the country’s president and vice-president. The commission’s secretariat, consisting of some 300 officials, is located in New Delhi.

The chief election commissioner and the two members are appointed by the president (presumably on the prime minister’s advice), each for a term of six years or until he/she reaches the age of 65, whichever is sooner. Their status, salaries, and perks are the same as those of the Indian Supreme Court judges. They cannot be removed except through impeachment by parliament. The commission has its own independent budget, prepared by the secretariat in consultation with the ministry of finance, and usually it gets what it requests. The expenses for conducting the elections are, however, borne by the governments concerned.

The commission’s task is huge, considering that the Lok Sabha (lower house of parliament) elections involve over 668 million voters and some 800,000 polling stations. It decides the location of polling stations and counting centres. It frames the code of conduct that political parties and candidates are to follow. It appoints a returning officer in each constituency who scrutinizes nomination papers and announces the result after counting of votes has been completed.

Political parties register with the commission, which requires them to hold periodic internal elections. It settles disputes between the factions of a party in so far as they bear upon the electoral process. It may disqualify an elected person if he has failed to submit an accounting of his election expenses or has been found guilty of other malpractice. Its decision in this regard is binding on all concerned.

Allow me to submit, however, that if elections in India are relatively fair, the reason is not to be found exclusively in the independence and impartiality of the election commission. One may wonder also whether this commission is independent because its chief and members are possessed of unshakable integrity or because the powers that be have not sought to influence them.

The election commission in Pakistan performs pretty much the same functions as does the Indian. The organizational differences between them may be noted. The commission in Pakistan consists normally of the chief election commissioner (CEC) appointed by the president in his discretion. Two members are added to aid him in conducting specific elections. The president appoints them after consulting the chief election commissioner and the Supreme Court chief justice. They return to their former positions after the election in question has been concluded.

The chief must be a serving judge of the Supreme Court or someone eligible to hold that office; the members must be high court judges or eligible for appointment as such. The chief serves for a term of three years, which may be extended for one more year upon a resolution of the National Assembly to that effect. He may not be removed except through the process prescribed for the removal of Supreme Court judges. Considering that elections are required to be held once every five years, it is possible that a CEC may serve his three-year term without having had the occasion to oversee an election.

There is nothing in the constitution or the law that keeps the commission from being independent. Once appointed, the chief election commissioner has secure tenure. Since he cannot succeed himself for another full term, temptation is not there to sway him. Yet, the general perception in Pakistan is that no election commission during the last 30 years has been independent and impartial. This perception is probably based on the fact that several of the post-1970 elections were rigged on a large scale, and the referendum of April 2002 was rigged on a massive scale. It may be appropriate to ask whether the commission has the capacity to stop the government of the day and private power centres from rigging an election. It is not the commission’s own staff but a variety of other public officials who operate the polling process: check the identity of voters as they come in, take care of the ballot boxes, and count the votes. Police and other law enforcement personnel are deployed to maintain order, safeguard the approaches to the polling station, and ensure the voters’ unhindered access to it.

These functionaries are working for the commission only for the election day and they are not subject to its discipline. Malfeasance on the part of any of them may be punished if it has been reported to the commission, investigated, and judged, all of which must take a lot of time. As one might then expect, not many such cases reach the commission.

The present commission says it will enforce, “at all costs,” the code of conduct it has issued. But the fact is that it simply does not have the ways and means of doing so. Its code says, for instance, that political parties must stay away from the forthcoming local elections, and that candidates are not to profess, by word or symbol, their affiliation with any political, ethnic, or religious party. Actually, both parties and candidates are doing the forbidden thing.

According to a recent report (July 17), spokesmen for the PPP, ANP, JUI, and JI in Mardan (NWFP) claimed that they had been receiving applications for their “tickets,” and that as of that time they had almost completed the task of selecting their nominees. They had also chosen the labels that would identify their candidates’ affiliation (“Watan Dost” for ANP, “Awam Dost” for PPP, “Islam Dost for JUI, and “Al Khidmat” for JI). The Sindh chief minister said that his party (PML-Q) intended to sponsor candidates for the local elections.

All of this was happening in full public view and, yet, the election commission did nothing to stop it, presumably because it couldn’t. Its code says also that no candidate may refer to his rival’s private life or reveal any sectarian bias in his utterances. Considering that many thousands of candidates and their partisans will be talking, these requirements would appear to be altogether unenforceable.

Some opposition politicians say that the chief election commissioner should be a person of whom all of the major parties, including those in the opposition, approve. This is not a viable proposal, for there is little prospect of the parties agreeing upon the identity of this person. Second, even if this unlikely consensus materializes, there can be no assurance that the person thus appointed would treat all contestants equally, and that he would be immune from external pressure.

It seems to me that elections in Pakistan will not be fair and honest until the government of the day is willing to forgo intervention to influence their outcome and will let the chips fall where they might. Let us start with General Musharraf. He has no personal interest in the outcome of the forthcoming local elections. But the members of the presidential electoral college (central and provincial legislators) do have both interests and obligations at the local level for the fulfilment of which they need the cooperation of nazims and councillors.

It may be taken for granted that the PML (Q) members of the national and provincial assemblies and their allies, will want to steer the local elections so as to enable their likely supporters to win. They will ask the general to let them do the needful. He will then end up closing his eyes to whatever may be happening in the electoral arena.

The chief ministers, ministers, and the provincial legislators in Punjab and Sindh will find ways of letting the public officials assigned to election duty know that their candidates should be enabled to win. Not all of these officials may be willing to oblige, but we may be sure that many will be. That transfers and new postings of officials have been stopped for the duration does not mean that those already in place will be entirely unyielding.

In sum it may be said that we can have decent elections only if governments at all levels not only refrain from breaking the relevant laws but step in to stop the local wielders of raw power from seducing or intimidating voters. In order for this result to be accomplished all of us, opinion makers and various organs of civil society, must continue to advocate it.

The writer is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, USA. E-mail: anwarsyed@cox.net

ACCORDING to a joint statement issued in Washington on July 18, US President George W. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh have resolved to transform the relationship between their two countries and establish a global partnership in areas of mutual interest, including the nuclear field.

US Under-Secretary of State Nicholas Burns called it a “high water mark of US-India relations since 1947”.

It is generally believed that President Bush, aiming to boost India as a counterbalance against China’s growing military might, has moved closer to accepting it as a nuclear weapons state, notwithstanding his rhetoric of a vigorous non-proliferation policy. While welcoming the Indian prime minister to the White House on July 18, President Bush appreciated India’s strong commitment to preventing nuclear proliferation and stated that as a responsible state, with advanced nuclear technology, India should acquire the same benefits and advantages as other such states are entitled to.

President Bush also told Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that he would seek agreement from the Congress to modify US laws and policies towards this end and work with friends and allies to adjust international regimes to enable full civil nuclear energy cooperation and trade with India, including, but not limited to, expeditious consideration of fuel supplies for its nuclear reactors at Tarapur.

Interestingly enough, in the week preceding the Indian leader’s visit to Washington, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a leading US think tank that wields enormous influence on the state department, organized a discussion on “Rising Frictions in Sino-US Relations” and also released a report” India as a new global power” written by Ashley Tellis, an Indian-born nuclear weapons expert affiliated with the Endowment, which strongly advocated the upgradation of US-India relations to act as a bulwark against China’s rising economic and military power that could threaten US interests.

It is also noteworthy that amongst the exponents of enhanced US-India ties are high-ranking US officials, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns, the National Security Adviser, Stephen J Hadley and a former US ambassador to India, Robert Blackwill. All of them worked relentlessly to bring about the desired change in the outlook of the United States toward India’s nuclear programme.

On the other hand, the nuclear deal between the United States and India, exempting the latter from the non-proliferation norms, has been criticized by a number of prominent analysts and nuclear experts. Owing to space constraints only two such comments are reproduced which are self-explanatory.

George Perkovich, who is a prominent nuclear expert, criticized the US-India nuclear deal on the ground that “accepting India as a nuclear weapons state without obtaining the consent of other key states, the system of non-proliferation rules can begin to collapse.” Leonard Spector, a former Clinton administration official, while endorsing the need for better US-India relations, said that the belief that the spread of nuclear weapons must be curbed “is being trumped up by a view that there are worthy holders and unworthy holders and that the universal rules are going to be modified in a way that favour those countries considered more worthy.”

One should not, however, be surprised at Washington’s present nuclear deal with New Delhi. It may be recalled that in 1961 the United States had contemplated assisting India in the field of nuclear energy with a view to promoting it as a counterweight to China. However, the idea of making India an “atomic ally” had to be shelved because of some problems in its implementation.

It is, however, reasonable to assume that as a result of some secret understanding between the United States and India, the former has been providing assistance to the latter to pursue its nuclear programme. Probably this is the reason why the United States has been ignoring India’s defiance of the nuclear non-proliferation regime for decades and has remained totally oblivious to Pakistan’s security concerns.

The recent US-India nuclear agreement that is being considered a prelude to India’s recognition as a full-fledged nuclear weapons power, illustrates how Washington perceived its nuclear policy in South Asia. Washington should, however, understand that its unrealistic and discriminatory policy in the nuclear realm in South Asia, apart from clouding its relations with Pakistan, could also lead to other serious complications, which may ultimately turn out to be detrimental to its own interest in the region.

Regrettably, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has strongly opposed the suggestion that Washington could sign a similar nuclear deal with Pakistan as it has done with India. His purely hypothetical idea that political instability in Pakistan could jeopardize the security of its nuclear weapons, which may fall into the hands of extremists, has been floated only to create a negative impact on the Americans who fear that the next move of the extremists would be a nuclear strike on the United States. Needless to say, the Indian prime minister remarks were highly irresponsible and belied ground realities.

Security of nuclear material is an essential part of the responsible and peaceful use of nuclear energy. The prime responsibility for nuclear weapons safety rests with the nuclear weapons states themselves. A safe nuclear culture has been high on Pakistan’s list of priorities even in the very early stages when the country was pursuing peaceful uses of atomic energy.

In February 2000, Pakistan devised a well-defined command and control system and established a National Command Authority to manage Pakistan’s nuclear forces. As a result, the strategic assets of the country are under foolproof custodial controls and are beyond the reach of unauthorized persons. As such, any apprehension that the nuclear weapons might fall into the hands of extremists is totally baseless.

Pakistan and India are the only two nuclear weapons states which have not yet acceded to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) and may not do so unless they are formally recognized as nuclear powers. However, whereas India’s quest for nuclear status is aimed at fulfilling its long-held ambition to be a regional hegemon and a major global power, Pakistan’s perspective on this issue is rather different.

Pakistan, that concentrated on the nuclear option, much against its will, to meet its security concerns, feels that the nuclearization of South Asia has created regional stability and both, Pakistan and India, have realized the futility of an open-ended estrangement between them and have embarked upon a process of normalizing relations, having seemingly made substantial progress towards this end. It is hardly necessary to mention that their nuclear-deterrence relationship has been the driving force behind the peace move initiated by their leaders.

The United States and other permanent members of the UN Security Council should, therefore, take a realistic view of the ground realities and recognize both Pakistan and India as de jure nuclear states in the interest of peace, security and stability in the region and also enable them to fulfil their obligations as stipulated under Article 1 of the NPT.

The writer is a former ambassador.