By Arun Kumar, IANS
Washington : US lawmakers want Washington to increase pressure on President Pervez Musharraf to ensure free and fair elections in Pakistan even as a senior official admitted that some fraud was to be expected.
The US has sent “a mixed and muddled message” to Pakistan about the importance of a free election and transparent counting of the votes, Democrat Representative John Tierney told Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher at a Congressional hearing Tuesday on the Feb 18 election.
“If we care about protecting our soldiers in Afghanistan from escalating cross-border attacks, then we have an absolutely crucial interest in ensuring that the government in Pakistan has the popular mandate to confront extremism and terrorism within its borders,” he said.
Given the history of electoral abuses in Pakistan, some fraud was to be expected in the elections but the US was working hard to ensure a poll that is “as free and fair as possible”, Boucher told the House panel.
To counter electoral abuses, the US was supporting observer missions, creating US embassy teams to monitor key races and pressing the government to ensure transparency, he said.
But lawmakers questioned whether a fair election was possible under Musharraf, who has stacked the Supreme Court justices with his own nominees, placed restrictions on the media and detained opposition lawyers.
“We don’t necessarily accept a certain level of fraud but, if history is any guide and current reports are any guide, we should expect some,” Boucher said. “We continue to work very hard to try to ensure an election that’s as free and fair as possible.”
Unless Musharraf was willing to release detained judges and to “appoint people who are not perceived to be his puppets… how are we ever going to get people to accept any election as being legitimate?” panel chairman Tierney wondered.
Describing former prime minister Benazir Bhutto’s Dec 27 assassination as a blow to supporters of democracy and opponents of violent extremism everywhere, he said rumours abound that Musharraf is looking for a way to postpone elections again and, perhaps, indefinitely.
Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, in light of the widespread Pakistani view of US complicity with a dictator, sees electoral strength in bashing the US, Tierney said.
Despite signs that the vaunted Pakistani military establishment is distancing itself from Musharraf, Bush administration officials appear to continue expressing steadfast support for him.
“Despite evidence that President Musharraf’s clinging to power represents a distraction to our counter-terrorism efforts, we continue to pursue policies described by Pakistanis as ‘Busharraf’,” Tierney said.
“Our view is that the issue of an independent Pakistani judiciary can’t be solved that simply,” Boucher said when asked why the US had not demanded that its key ally Musharraf reinstate the apex court judges.
The official said he did not expect Pakistan to address the matter until after the elections, when he hoped that elected politicians could decide how to build an independent judiciary.
Republican Christopher Shays said: “I can’t get beyond the fact that he basically dissolved the judiciary, and put them aside, and it seems that almost everything that follows from that point becomes a farce.”
Boucher sought to counter the lawmakers by arguing that greater scrutiny by Pakistani media, opposition parties and outside observers would lower the chances of the election being rigged.
“It’s harder to get away with it now… There is going to be a lot of reporting, there is going to be an enormous number of observers around. The political parties are well organized and, believe me, they will cry foul if there are any fouls,” he said. “I don’t think we should give up on this election.”