Monday's national and provincial elections in Pakistan are meant to be a key step in a tortuous process of moving Pakistan from military to civilian rule.

They are essentially a referendum on nearly nine years of rule of President Pervez Musharraf.

That rule began with a coup in 1999 widely welcomed within Pakistan.

Mr Musharraf is not actually running in these parliamentary polls but his popularity will be manifested in votes cast for the party that backs him - the Pakistan Muslim League (PML- Q), known as the "King's Party".

The president has dismissed a series of polls from foreign organisations that show his popularity has plummeted. "They are carrying out opinion polls through NGOs who abuse us," he told government officials in Islamabad.

Ghost of Benazir Bhutto

But there's a powerful factor against Mr Musharraf at play in the campaign - the shocking assassination of Benazir Bhutto on 27 December. This election is expected to deliver not just the solid vote bank of her Pakistan People's Party, but a wave of sympathy that's hard to quantify.

Ms Bhutto's ghost hangs over this race.

Her iconic image is everywhere in her party's campaign. Her last rousing speech at that fateful rally in Rawalpindi is blasted through loudspeakers at election gatherings for candidates vowing to carry on in her name.

They know she is still one of biggest vote-getters of all.

And if the results don't deliver a resounding victory to the Pakistan People's Party and gains for the Pakistan Muslim League (N) of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, this will almost certainly provoke calls for street protests and a very real risk of violence and turmoil.

The military question

The big question is: can a president who last year purged the Supreme Court, imposed a state of emergency, and arrested thousands of his opponents accept a "free and fair and transparent" verdict?

He told he would leave power when he had the "feeling" his people no longer supported him. And, for now, he doesn't feel that's the case.


On his recent swing through Europe, he tried to convince the world he was still their best bet for stability and democracy.

The role of the army is crucial.

In this potent political cocktail, there's another new element in the mix - the recently appointed army chief, Gen Ashfaq Kayani.

So far, Gen Kayani has won praise for his efforts to send a strong message that the army has no place in politics. Serving soldiers, including members of the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), have been told they cannot meet politicians.

But this is a country where the army has ruled for more than half of its 61 year old history and where the ISI is known to have always played a role manipulating elections.

"We've seen it before," said one human rights campaigner. "There's a manual and it starts, as always, with a new military chief and a positive reception."


Scepticism and fear

Pressure at home and in foreign capitals has helped push Pakistan a few steps forward on this bumpy road to a more democratic future.

In December Gen Musharraf reluctantly took off his military uniform. And there's been only a relatively short delay of a few weeks in holding elections since Ms Bhutto's assassination.

But such is the scepticism and fear surrounding these polls that, even in the last days before polling, many Pakistanis around the country still say they expect "something" would happen to stop them.

The biggest test will be the day after.

Can politicians, long at daggers drawn, work together? There's no love lost between the party backing President Musharraf, the PML-Q, and other major political forces.

It's hard to exaggerate the risks of failure.

Now, more than at any other time in Pakistan's chequered history, there are deeply felt grievances that could pull this federation apart.

They could also fuel a growing pro-Taleban insurgency provoking fear even among Pakistan's bravest defenders of democracy.

Losers cry foul

Alongside all of this is the issue of how fair the vote will be.

President Musharraf has promised they would be "free, fair, transparent and peaceful".

But the run up to Monday's polls has been anything but peaceful - more than 400 people have been killed in violence in this year alone. And there is profound doubt, at home and abroad, that these polls will truly be free, fair and transparent.

Mr Musharraf points out that in Pakistan's elections the loser always cries foul.

That certainly was the case in elections I've witnessed, including during the 1990s when power shifted back and forth between Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party and Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League.

The losers always had good reason to complain, even if it didn't always make the difference between winning or losing.

Even by those standards, this election stands out.

"We have not seen any form of rigging that is not being used this time," says prominent lawyer Asma Jahangir, who heads the country's Human Rights Commission.

"All the rigging used over the years is included in this one, from false ID cards, to discrepancies in polling lists, to changing polling stations."


'Black hole'

And yet, this time, so much is at stake - for Pakistan and the international community - that there's intense scrutiny of the process leading up to the vote.

The US administration intervened to urge Pakistan to publish the results of local polling stations which are aggregated at a district level. Both foreign and Pakistani election experts point to this "black hole" as a possible tool to manipulate the numbers.

When Richard Boucher, the US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia, was asked about possible fraud, he replied: "On a scale from terrible to great, it'll be somewhere in the middle."

This "it's good enough" approach grates on Pakistan's burgeoning civil society who are on the front line of battles waged on the streets and in the media to push this country towards something approaching a more genuine democracy.

"Five to ten per cent (of vote rigging) is always there, but we can't afford anything but a fair election," comments political analyst Nasim Zehra.


"This is a key opportunity to take us forward, beyond the mess we are now in."