During his recent visit to Pakistan, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher tried to balance American support for democracy in Pakistan with the Bush administration’s support for General Pervez Musharraf’s military regime. Washington is hoping that, without Musharraf relinquishing power, Pakistan could inch forward towards civilian supremacy and democratic rule with the 2007 parliamentary elections.

The U.S. wants these elections to be more acceptable both at home and abroad than previous electoral exercises under Musharraf’s rule. But so far there is no indication that the next election will be any fairer than previous ones.

The fundamental realities in Pakistan are that the country is ruled by a general in uniform who has shown no inclination for giving up power; The Pakistani constitution has already been altered beyond recognition; and the country’s political parties remain at the mercy of the country’s intelligence services. As the 2007 election approaches, Musharraf and the politicized military have stepped up their war against popular opposition leaders.

Instead of fudging the issue, the U.S. and others in the international community should make it clear that a free and fair election would be possible in Pakistan only if some basic conditions are fulfilled. An independent Election Commission, with full powers to challenge the actions of everyone including General Musharraf is necessary as is the presence of competent international observers, such as those provided by the Carter Center and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) in several contentious elections around the world. But most important is the need to check the tendency of Pakistan’s establishment to deliver a technically correct poll amid much propaganda and fanfare without providing a level playing field in the run up to the elections.

Totally contrary to parliamentary traditions, a serving general (General Musharraf) has been directly involved in the running of a political party (the official Muslim League). There can be no free expression of the peoples will at the ballot box until and unless the constitutionally mandated separation between state functionaries and elected politicians is restored. To that end, General Musharraf must take off his uniform immediately.

In addition, Musharraf and the armed forces must be restrained from pre-determining the outcome of elections by mandating the exclusion of known political figures and declaring that certain personalities will never be allowed to be elected. Mr. Boucher is being disingenuous when he says that the issue of allowing Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto to return to Pakistan to contest the 2007 general elections is an internal matter to be decided by Pakistan’s political parties and the government. If the question of whether Pakistan is run democratically is a matter of concern for the world’s sole superpower then the factors that inhibit creation of democratic circumstances should also concern the international community. How can there be a free and fair election when a coup-making general arbitrarily decides who can or cannot participate in the electoral process?

The question of the competence or integrity of Mr. Sharif and Ms. Bhutto has no relevance to their right of inclusion in the political process. In the United States, even indicted politicians have the right to run for office and only the conclusion of the judicial process in the form of conviction for a crime disqualifies a political leader. America and other democracies do not give the Executive branch of government the right to disqualify candidates on grounds of charges not proven in a court of law. If such a right were conceded, people in power would bar the candidates they most fear after making a set of allegations against them. Until conviction in fair trials, politicians must have the right to take their case to the people. In a democracy, the people are the sovereign and they should have the right to decide the fate of their leaders.

With its eye on the 2007 elections, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) is pretending to have found new evidence of corruption against Ms Benazir Bhutto, who was last in power ten years ago. If the prosecutions brought a decade ago have not yielded any convictions, how can new cases filed more than ten years after the fact have credibility?

Another fundamental requirement of a free and fair poll in Pakistan is the termination of all covert operations by Pakistan’s intelligence services in the domestic political arena. The political wing of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has operated from the shadows to coerce or blackmail candidates in the past. Now the Intelligence Bureau (IB) also runs a political operation. These are aimed at weakening organized political opposition to the man in power.

During general Musharraf’s rule, the intelligence services have created the PML (Q) and the Patriots faction of the PPP through arm-twisting and outright corruption. Manipulating the political process is not a legitimate function for any country’s security services and in the presence of such manipulative capacity it is unrealistic to expect a fair poll. Similarly, Corps Commanders of Pakistan’s ostensibly professional army should also have no role (as they did during last year’s local elections) in telling local influentials to throw their weight behind officially approved candidates or to sever ties with opposition political parties.

(Husain Haqqani is Director of Boston University’s Center for International Relations and Co-Chair of the Hudson Institute’s Project on Islam and Democracy. He is the author of the Carnegie Endowment book ‘Pakistan Between Mosque and Military’)