Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain has been a politician for over 20 years along with spearheading a formidable number of businesses. Now a wealthy industrialist, Shujaat comes from a humble background with a father who started out as a police constable.
Born in Gujrat, Pakistan, in 1946, Shujaat studied at Forman Christian College Lahore. Meanwhile, his father Chaudhry Zahoor Elahi had by this time become a wealthy industrialist and politician. Now, the Chaudhry family – many members of which are in PML-Q – is involved in businesses relating to textiles, sugar, flour mills and agriculture.
Political career Shujaat entered politics for the first time after his father’s murder in 1981. He became a member of Ziaul Haq’s Majlis-i-Shura – a body of ‘advisers’ to the president handpicked by Zia himself.
Soon enough, the politician, not quite known for being an excellent orator, was appointed a federal minister in the cabinet of Muhammad Khan Junejo.
Heading an elaborate network of patronage in Punjab province, spurred on by his membership of the Jat clan, the PML-Q president is considered a powerful ‘electable’: He has been a member of the National Assembly in 1985, 1988, 1997 and 2002.
As a federal minister, Shujaat has held the portfolios of Interior, Information and Broadcasting and Industries and Production. He held these portfolios during the Zia regime and during Nawaz Sharif’s 1990-93 government.
As far as his party affiliations before the relatively recent creation of PML-Q are concerned, Shujaat was a member of Sharif’s faction of the PML, which was a key component of the Islamic Democratic Alliance (Islami Jamhoori Ittehad) in the 1988 and 1990 elections.
Shujaat formed the PML-Q after he and a number of other dissidents parted ways with the PML-N. The faction, formed after Musharraf’s ouster of Sharif, made Shujaat even more powerful. On one occasion, the PML-Q chief explicitly supported the appointment of a relatively unknown politician from Balochistan, his old friend Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali, for the post of prime minister.
However, soon after, Shujaat and Jamali had a falling out and the latter tendered his resignation from the prime minister’s position in 2004. The powerful industrialist then took over for a mere few weeks as interim premier while paving the way for Shaukat Aziz to take up the mantle as Musharraf’s new prime minister.
Shujaat remained a powerful politician during Musharraf’s regime as the president of the ‘King’s party’. He also held negotiations with the late Nawab Akbar Bugti before the latter’s killing in August 2006. Later in 2007, Shujaat was also sent to hold talks with Lal Masjid and Jamia Hafsa administrations before the botched operation started.
With Musharraf’s resignation and resultant flight from the country, Shujaat and his party saw a diminishing of their fortunes. The PML-Q was no longer at the top of the ladder with arch-rival PML-N exceeding its strength in the 2008 general election.
Shujaat, however, continues to be the face of his party along with his cousin Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi. And since PML-Q does not have a class of ‘party workers’ to rely on, it remains highly dependent on electable heavyweights, hence, making it synonymous with the cousins themselves.
He has also been seen to consistently side with the military establishment by remaining allied with Zia and he then siding with Musharraf after Nawaz was bid goodbye. The seasoned politician is focused more on realpolitik, siding with the status quo and disassociating himself from any ideology in particular. His association with Musharraf in particular goes all the way back to his college days.
In the 2008-2013 Parliament, PML-Q remained allied with the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), although aside from the occasional hiccups, the ties between the two have been relatively stable. He is currently a member of the Senate.
According to his statement of assets and liabilities for 2010-2011 submitted to the Election Commission of Pakistan, Shujaat does not own a car and his 50 per cent share in two residential houses is worth Rs5.2 and Rs3.4 million respectively.
In recent news
With negotiations to strike electoral alliances in full swing, Shujaat has remained in the media spotlight. Astute as he is in cutting deals and negotiating, Shujaat was at the forefront of talks with Tehrik-i-Minhajul Quran’s Dr Tahirul Qadri and was leading the government delegation that reached an agreement with the Canadian maulvi during his January sit-in.
He also represented PML-Q during the recent All Parties Conference called by Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam – Fazl’s chief, Fazlur Rehman, over holding peace talks the Pakistani Taliban.
With the PML-Q desperate to make headway in this election as members jump ship in droves, Shujaat has also been busy over seat adjustments. So far, he has successfully negotiated with PPP – both parties have decided to field joint candidates in the coming general election.
— Research and text by Heba Islam
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