ISLAMABAD, Sept 26: Pakistan Muslim League (N) Chairman Raja Zafarul Haq said on Thursday that President Gen Pervez Musharraf was rigging October’s elections to ensure a compliant parliament.

Gen Musharraf was doing his utmost to tilt the playing field in his favour for October 10, Mr Haq told Reuters in an interview.

He said: “The outside world doesn’t understand how far they can go. They think elections are fair if people are allowed to cast their vote but the fact is there is more pre-poll rigging than on the day of the elections.”

At the national level, he said, political parties had been hobbled by the exclusion of two former prime ministers, Benazir Bhutto of the Pakistan People’s Party and Nawaz Sharif of the PML-N.

Ms Bhutto has been threatened with jail if she returns to the country. Mr Sharif, in exile in Saudi Arabia, has withdrawn from the race and his relatives have been barred.

According to Mr Haq, at the local level, a massive official effort has been made to force politicians to abandon parties, like the PML-N, and stand instead for what has become known as the “King’s Party”, a faction of the Muslim League, loyal to Gen Musharraf.

A key tool, he said, was the National Accountability Bureau, a body supposed to punish corrupt politicians, whose role, he added, had itself been corrupted for political ends.

He stated that politicians with cases or accusations against them had been promised they would be spared prosecution if they joined the King’s Party, PML-QA.

“And very large number of them left us,” the PML-N leader said. “Whosoever has a large number of cases against them has crossed over.”

Mr Haq said a carrot had also been offered to reluctant politicians — the promise of a place in government as part of the “winning team”. The tactic seemed to be working as the PML-QA had built a head of steam in recent weeks, he added.

In the imperfect world of Pakistani politics, winning influential local politicians over to your side is at last half the battle, and PML-N knows it has lost some key vote winners.

Gen Musharraf says Pakistan’s political elite bled the country dry during more than a decade of corrupt civilian rule, and claims he is trying to build a new political order.

Many Pakistanis are unconvinced, seeing instead a military dictator cementing his hold on power. But with just two weeks to go before the elections, the streets of the country remain quiet.

Deprived of their charismatic leaders, and with restrictions on where they can hold rallies, neither the Pakistan People’s Party nor the PML-N has ignited any kind of national campaign yet.

There is a lacklustre and apathetic air about the polls, although Mr Haq is convinced politics will wake up once parliament gets going.

He said his party would work to overturn most of Musharraf’s constitutional amendments, and for that reason alone would not boycott October’s vote.

“Despite all these difficulties we want to remain in the process, we want to participate...in the parliament,” he said. “It is a very delicate job to take the country out of this mess. How many of us will be allowed to enter parliament I don’t know, but leaving the field open through a boycott is also no choice at all.”