February
16, 2008 US Making Elaborate
Efforts
to Monitor Pakistan Polls
Washington
The US has high stakes in Pakistan's general election, being held
Monday, and is making elaborate efforts to monitor the exercise but
is also prepared for irregularities, the State Department has said.
Besides a high-powered Congressional team going to Pakistan as
observers, the Bush administration will have US embassy employees
fanning out to various locations in the country to see how free and
fair for the purpose, US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack
said at a briefing Friday.
He expressed confidence that although relatively small in number,
the Americans in the observation mission would be able to see what
is taking place on the ground.
The US government has also provided quite a bit of funding for the
training of roughly 20,000 Pakistani election observers.
"We were working with the government of Pakistan to ensure that
those observers would have access to polling places and be able to
do their jobs," McCormack said.
"The international system has a number of efforts underway as well,"
he added.
McCormack said people should be able to assemble peacefully and
"there should be a set of procedures surrounding election day, (so)
the Pakistani people can have confidence that their ballot will, in
fact, be faithfully reflected as part of the results of the
election".
But the State Department is reconciled to a less than ideal poll
process.
"There have been, in the past, irregularities within the Pakistani
electoral process. One would hope that they can improve upon past
performance in a sort of subtly increasing trend line," the
spokesperson said when asked about the alleged recording of the
Pakistani attorney general predicting that the elections would be
rigged.
The US stakes riding on the election results are the future of ally
President Pervez Musharraf and the fate of its war on terror. But
McCormack refused to prejudge the outcome of the election.
"We all will look for the election to produce a government in which
the Pakistani people can have confidence," is all he said.
McCormack also refused to elaborate on Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice's earlier statement that she hoped that moderate
voices would be represented in the new government.
"I don't want to give the perception that we are trying to influence
the composition of the future Pakistani government beyond
encouraging moderate forces within the Pakistani political system to
bond together, work together to help govern that country and put it
back on the pathway to democratic rule," he said.
The Congressional observer team comprises Senator Joseph Biden, head
of the powerful Senate foreign relations committee, Senator John
Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, and Republican
Chuck Hagel.
Biden has forecast riots throughout Pakistan if the elections were
found to be "patently rigged".
Biden, who has been mentioned as a possible secretary of state if a
Democrat captures the White House in the November 2008 election,
even told reporters that if the elections were unfair, "I would move
to cut off aid to Pakistan, military aid".
Said Kerry: "I hope the government understands that merely clinging
to power meets nobody's objectives because we wind up playing into
the hands of radical instability not only of the country but the
region."
For its part, Pakistan's embassy in Washington is busy with a public
relations exercise to allay concerns that the elections will not be
fair.
"We welcome observers and journalists from across the world to
witness this historic process," said Ambassador Mahmud Ali Durrani
at a press conference last week.
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