The results of Saturday's parliamentary election in Afghanistan won't be released for weeks, but the country is already seeing the effect of the campaign: President Hamid Karzai's ruling clique drew up lists of preferred candidates and strengthened its control over the election process in the months ahead of the vote, insiders say.

 

The United Nations and donor countries are doing less to prevent fraud than during previous elections, preferring to leave those functions to the Afghans. The institution that played a vital role in catching the vote-rigging by Mr. Karzai's supporters in last year's presidential vote, the Electoral Complaints Commission, has been replaced – in accordance with Mr. Karzai's decree – by a panel appointed by the President himself.

 

This will mean Afghanistan's scrappy lower house, formally known as the Wolesi Jirga, or House of the People, will likely fall more squarely in line with Mr. Karzai's priorities in the coming years. The President's younger half-brother, Ahmad Wali Karzai, the most powerful man in southern Afghanistan, made a similar prediction in Kandahar this week. Contrasting this vote with the previous parliamentary elections, Mr. Karzai said: “We want to send a team to the Afghan parliament which will not be against the Afghan government.”

 

Despite its pugnacious characters, Afghanistan's first parliament never made serious trouble for the President, who enjoys far greater powers than any other elected official under the country's heavily centralized system. With the stakes relatively low, palace officials are believed to be prioritizing the appearance of fairness. Many of last year's obvious excesses – grossly overstuffed ballot boxes, and counts sloppily forged with round numbers in the tallies – may be avoided.

 

In fact, the elections may appear smoother than last year's debacle.

 

Roughly 300,000 candidate agents and other observers have registered to watch the voting, but none of them will have the powerful networks that the defeated presidential candidates used last year to investigate and publicize fraud. Nor do the Afghan government's international supporters have any interest in pointing out the vote's weaknesses, and the media will have little access to polls in the dangerous countryside.

 

The voters themselves do not need television to tell them the vote is rigged, however. Naseem Pashtoon, owner of one of the biggest newspapers in southern Afghanistan, guessed that turnout among registered voters in Kandahar might be around 5 per cent – “if that,” he said.

 

Official turnout numbers may not look that bleak, but could be inflated because the number of voting cards far exceeds the number of people likely to vote. The government issued about 17.5 million cards, and millions more are believed to have been printed for profit in Pakistan. The best guess at the number of actual voters in the last election, amid the confusion caused by fraud, was about four million – and in a less-exciting contest among 2,500 candidates trying for 249 parliamentary seats, the number of voters should be smaller this year.

 

Fear of violence will also keep people away from the polls. At least 22 people have been killed and 19 kidnapped in election-related incidents so far, and the Taliban are threatening worse on voting day.

 

One warning letter circulated in Kandahar city, obtained by The Globe and Mail, suggested that people should not only stay away from polling stations but avoid setting foot on the streets altogether. That letter was signed by a Taliban commander who described his job title as “responsible for assassinations” and gave a phone number for complaints.

Some people on the streets of Kandahar said they would defy the insurgents and vote anyway, but others said this will be the first year they have given up on the idea. A wealthy landowner sipped a cup of green tea at his home in Kandahar city and explained why he has stopped voting: “All the people think this is only a waste of time,” said the 45-year-old tribal leader, who calls himself Abdullah. He felt good about the elections in 2004 and 2005, he said, but the massive fraud in 2009 left him feeling cheated.

 

For some, their decision about voting will depend more on the security conditions. Abdul Hanan, 43, who lives in the slums north of Kandahar city, saw a Taliban warning letter posted near a mosque yesterday morning. “Now we're scared,” Mr. Hanan said. “We don't care if it's the government or the Taliban; we want good, honest and wise parliament members to speak about our rights, but unfortunately we don’t know whether to go to the polling station and use our vote.