Monitoring the Monitors

For the last few years, every general election in a South Asian country has seen a group of individuals from the region fly off to monitor the polls. The South Asian monitors, who are mainly academics, former ambassadors, retired civil servants, society women, journalists, politicians, various kinds of retired folks, and relatives of various VIPs, have so far been hosted by Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Pakistan.   Similar monitoring groups also parachute down with predictable regularity from overseas: they come from the European Commission, from assorted North American think tanks, and the Commonwealth. They come with a pious mission of civilising and democraticing the natives, flying in on the penultimate days before polling and leaving as soon as the counting is done. The high points are the meetings with the head of state, the prime minister (interim or otherwise), leaders of the political opposition, and so on. It is also enjoyable to don the photo IDs and go around booth-hopping with local liaisons and—best of all—appearing on television to declare that the polls were "generally free and fair".

As soon as the Pakistan elections were announced  last  November by  President Farooq Ahmed Khan Leghari, the monitor organisations were once again scrambling to arrange the next election tourism package. As far as the SAARC region was concerned, more or less the same categories as mentioned above were put together. In and around the 3 February elections, the regional monitors spent 12 days or so in Pakistan monitoring elections, writing reports and issuing press releases.