AS elections approach, more and more newspaper column space is being devoted to the manner in which they should be held. With our experience of how they are conducted and doctored, we can be excused a certain cynicism about the whole exercise.

Several political parties have demanded that they should be supervised by a ‘neutral’ caretaker government, and an ‘independent’ chief election commissioner. Where these paragons of virtue are to descend from has been conveniently left unclear.

Even when teams of well-meaning foreign observers come to monitor an election, they rubber-stamp the proceedings, albeit with some qualifications. Having done observer duty with the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan in two general elections, I have seen my foreign counterparts being given the run-around by a practised bureaucracy.

It isn’t that the visiting teams are gullible: the problem is that they are looking at what takes place on election day itself, while the rigging might have begun months earlier. And to be honest, on the two occasions I went from one polling station to another in Karachi, I found very little evidence of obvious vote tampering. But the overall results were very different from what observers had forecast, with official candidates faring far better than anybody had expected.

In democracies everywhere, incumbency gives the ruling party a big advantage. But in Pakistan, elections normally take place after the sitting government has been turfed out by the president with the army’s support. An interim government is then installed to supervise the next election which must take place within three months of the dissolution of the assemblies. Given the fact that the interim government is stacked with politicians opposed to the previous government, this ensures that the dice are loaded. From Zia’s death in 1988 to Musharraf’s coup in 1999, Pakistan held four general elections, with Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif taking turns as prime minister.

Neither came even close to completing the normal five-year tenure before being removed. In the three-month periods the interim governments had at their disposal, major changes within the bureaucracy were made. The chief election commissioner is supposedly a neutral figure with a fixed tenure, and therefore immune to pressure. In reality, he almost invariably rules against appeals from the opposition, while upholding claims from officially anointed candidates. The federal election commission supervises the provincial electoral machinery, especially in the preparation of electoral rolls. The final lists are provided to polling stations a couple of days before the election, giving voters little time to lodge appeals if their names are not on it.

National identity cards are another way of disenfranchising large numbers of voters, especially women. Over the years, these ID cards have become mandatory for documents like driving and arms licences, as well as passports. But as the vast majority of Pakistani women have no occasion to apply for these, they don’t bother going through the hassles necessary to get an ID card. Seeing an opportunity to manipulate elections without seeming to, the government now insists that voters produce ID cards in order to vote. Since the majority of women, especially in Punjab and Sindh, have tended to vote for the Pakistan People’s Party, it is Benazir Bhutto who is most affected by this requirement.

But General Musharraf went one step further in the elections held under him in 2002 by insisting that all candidates must be graduates. This caused pandemonium in the major political parties as many landlords, traditional candidates from the rural areas, had never been to university. Mysteriously, a few of them suddenly acquired degrees, some of which were challenged before the election commission. But the religious parties were hit the hardest until the EC agreed provisionally to accept their madressah certificates as equivalent to BA degrees. Had it not been for this generous interpretation of what constitutes a university education, Pakistan’s assemblies might have been deprived of the collective wisdom of its clergy.

While the state machinery goes into overdrive to help ‘official’ candidates, police and district officers are shuffled around the provinces to boost their chances. Bureaucrats known as being apolitical — and there are fewer and fewer of them still around — are shunted into sinecures, or posted to the provincial capitals, away from the action. When nomination papers are filed, the documents submitted by opposition candidates are subjected to minute scrutiny, and rejected for the smallest flaw. This is why political parties always have ‘covering candidates’ whose papers are filed in case the major candidate is knocked out even before the elections.

Although there are now many private TV and radio channels available to political parties to push their message, the state-owned Pakistan Television and Radio Pakistan still have the biggest audiences in rural areas. An added attraction for the ruling party is that they do not have to pay to have their political agenda broadcast. And when the prime minister, his cabinet colleagues or their provincial counterparts are out on the stump, it goes without saying that their campaigning is underwritten by the exchequer. But these infractions pale into insignificance when compared with the real thuggery that goes on behind the scenes. Strong opposition candidates are known to have been blackmailed by intelligence agencies into either withdrawing, or switching sides. Often, they are shown incriminating documents, or told that banks would be told to foreclose on loans they might have taken. While these shenanigans take place at the time of filing nomination papers, arm-twisting continues until the elections.

All this time, protests pour into the election commission which routinely dismisses them. In one case I am personally familiar with, Ijazul Hasan, a PPP candidate in Lahore was declared the winner after the provisional count following the 2002 election. But by the morning, the EC had overturned this result in favour of Maulana Tahirul Qadri.

After the election, candidates are supposed to submit details of their campaign expenses to the EC. However, as everybody knows these figures cannot be accurate as the spending limit is absurdly low. But one huge payout the EC never questioned was the 100 million rupee slush fund operated by the ISI during the 1988 elections to ensure that Benazir Bhutto did not win an outright victory. This disclosure was made before the Supreme Court by General Asad Durrani, ex-director of the ISI, during hearings of a charge brought by Asghar Khan. However, this scandal was the tip of the iceberg: the ISI has traditionally played a sinister, behind-the-scenes in every recent election.

On election day itself, open rigging is generally confined to rural areas where outside observers seldom reach. Here, the sympathies of entire villages are known to the local administration, so roads are blocked to prevent voters from reaching polling stations. In the socially backward tribal areas of Balochistan and the NWFP, women simply are not allowed by their men to go out to vote.

So the next time you read that foreign observers have certified elections to be ‘free and fair’, barring some minor inconsistencies, be suspicious. Be very suspicious.