As the country gets ready for the elections, the discussions
-- as usual -- focus on security and fraud. There seem to be two worlds. One is
the world of procedures, barcodes, scanners, and tamper-evident bags. Of
recruitment criteria, complaints forms, female searchers, and police
contingents. Of confident reassurances that everything is under control. The
other is the world of rumors, threats, money, and power. Of disillusioned
voters, scheming candidates, interfering government officials, and threats of
targeted attacks. The two worlds don't seem to meet.
Diplomats, U.N. officials and electoral advisers have been
genuinely impressed by the measures taken by the IEC. Staff has been moved
around, in an attempt to disrupt the links and agreements needed to organize
effective fraud, and many of those working in last year's elections were not
re-employed (although this could mean many things). The list of polling centers
has been released well ahead of the elections and the IEC has withstood
pressures to add centers (the distribution of the centers has, however, not yet
been properly analyzed). Procedures have been significantly tightened. This
means that if they are followed it will be much more difficult to tamper with
the vote -- and if they are not followed, it will be easier to track where
things have gone wrong. So there is cautious -- and not so cautious -- optimism
that this vote will not be as messy as last year's.
Many journalists, analysts, and observers however have a
totally different picture. They take their cue from the Afghans they talk to,
many of whom are now obsessed with the fake voter cards from Pakistan, but who
also have detailed stories of schemes and deals and money payments -- in the
last election, as well as the current one. It would be foolish to dismiss these
stories as irrelevant or ill-informed, as Afghans tend to know rather well what
their relatives are up to and what goes on in their neighborhoods. It would be
foolish to forget, yet again, that procedures and measures only work if they
are implemented.
Polling day will be a scramble. Literally thousands of
people -- candidates, candidate supporters, IEC staff, local entrepreneurs,
commanders, businessmen -- have been preparing for months to manipulate the
election, and many more are ready to improvise. Some schemes will fail, some
will succeed. Ballot boxes will be stuffed, counts fudged, tally sheets
altered, polling stations shot at and the boxes taken "into safety," voters
threatened, polling staff made to look the other way, doors locked and
observers asked to leave, polling stations "reassigned" to private houses,
rival ballots removed or invalidated, boxes lost, forms forgotten.
Congratulatory statements at the end of the day, hailing the
courage of the Afghan people and their determination to exercise their
democratic right, will probably not fit how many Afghans feel and will add to
the feelings of cognitive dissonance. But early assessments that the election
was a full failure, because many people tried to manipulate it, also miss the
mark.
In a way, the real question for this election is not whether
there will be fraud -- there will be and probably quite a lot -- but what
happens once the fraud has taken place and once the extent of it starts
settling in. It is about what happens when the two worlds meet.
That is what I will be watching in the coming days.
Martine van Bijlert is the co-director of the AfghanistanAnalysts Network, where this was originally published.
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