“THE better I get to know men, the more I find myself loving dogs.” — General de Gaulle.

I didn’t want to write about the nazim elections of Chakwal but then the temptation proved too hard to resist. Global politics may be interesting but local politics is fascinating.

Chakwal, moreover, is no ordinary place. A land rich in talent, it has gifted one prime minister to India, Manmohan Singh, while its sister-district of Jhelum has gifted another, I. K. Gujral. If I were to name other prominent Indians from this area, the list would be long. But ask me about prominent Pakistanis, I would be stumped for an answer.

Chakwal’s most conspicuous manpower product has been the retired soldier — all ranks and all varieties. Indeed, there would be more generals from this area than any other part of the sub-continent. I can’t say how they are in service but out of uniform they tend to be a timid breed, keeping their heads down and generally shunning controversy. (Ever heard of a Chakwali general adopting a bold stand on any issue?)

Field Marshal (self-appointed) Ayub was from Haripur, Hazara. General Yahya Khan traced his ancestry to Persia, although by way of antiquarian knowledge I may add that he was born in Chakwal in 1917 when his father was Deputy Superintendent of Police here. Gen Zia was from Jullundhar; Pervez Musharraf is from Darya Ganj, Delhi. Next time someone is looking for a safe chief of army staff — the quest for an army chief who won’t be tempted to march on Islamabad constituting the core of Pakistan’s constitutional problem — he could try Chakwal.

I must hasten to add, however, that there is a well-known saying in Punjabi according to which Sindh is a land of ‘aashiqan’ (lovers), Gujrat of ‘koorhian’ (liars) and Chakwal of ‘munafaqan’ (hypocrites), which leaves the question open whether forward-marching generals have more to do with their places of origin or the heady atmosphere prevalent in GHQ.

I once asked a group of Chakwali generals at a wedding (three of them standing together holding their plates) why they weren’t saying a word against the cement-wallahs who appeared determined to ruin, for all time to come, the pristine splendour of Choa Saidan Shah. One of them (who, alas, must remain nameless) agreed with the implied suggestion that they lacked the guts to do so, adding for good measure that one Urdu-speaking general was worth three or four of their kind (an observation which sheds oblique light on the present configuration of the high command).

Lt Gen (retd) Abdul Majeed Malik has been an exception to this rule. He entered politics, contested elections, made it to the inner councils of the Nawaz Muslim League and became a minister in successive Nawaz Sharif governments. His political career set him apart from the usual run of Chakwali generals. But his joining the Q-League and deciding to play the army’s game when Nawaz Sharif was ousted from power in Oct ‘99 showed that, like others of his kind, he too had not strayed far from the Chakwali tradition of playing it safe and not taking too many risks.

Now, as misfortune would have it, General Malik has landed himself in a different soup altogether. Far from shunning controversy, he has courted it by presenting himself as nazim candidate for Chakwal — a nazim, under Gen Pervez Musharraf’s local government system, being something of an elected prefect.

Nothing wrong with this except that Malik thought that when he jumped into the fray, a man of his seniority and party distinction, the king’s party, would have no choice but to support him, all the more so because he was on the best of terms with the Chaudhris, the two master string-pullers who between them run the political side of the Musharraf dispensation.

Always known for subtle calculation, Malik couldn’t have got it more wrong this time. Far from owning him, the Punjab Chief Minister, Pervaiz Elahi, disowned him by declaring one Chaudhry Ghulam Abbas as the Q-League-supported candidate for district nazim.

Abbas was the incumbent nazim — a vociferous Musharraf-supporter and, perhaps equally to the point, close to the cement lobby. The president’s Camp Office — ultimate clearing house for all decisions, major or minor — apparently saw no reason to displace him. So, to Malik’s chagrin and no doubt great surprise, Abbas remained government favourite, Malik being pushed out into the cold.

In a way Malik himself was to blame for he had broken the first rule of political engagement: test the ground before venturing out. Quite apart from the question whether someone of his seniority should have aspired for the office of district nazim, before entering the contest he should have made sure of Q-League endorsement. And if there was even the faintest doubt about getting it, discretion might have been taken as the better part of valour.

Caution being shunned, the government was not amused. Malik had his nomination papers rejected in Chakwal, and later in the Lahore High Court (‘Pindi bench), on the grounds that his matric certificate was not genuine. Only by going to the Supreme Court have his papers been cleared. Purists (another name for the naive) might say that the judiciary being its own master, the government had no hand in giving Malik a runaround of the courts. Quite so but then what about Malik’s candidate for tehsil nazim, Zulfikar of Dullah, against whom a case has been registered by the FIA?

Suspicious timing which, together with the earlier rejection of Malik’s matric certificate, gives a fair idea of how these nazim elections are being conducted, especially in Punjab and Sindh, the two provinces whose chief ministers — Pervaiz Elahi and Arbab Ghulam Rahim — are taking no chances whatsoever. The pattern we have seen in Chakwal is being repeated, with variations large or small, in other districts. The situation in Chakwal has acquired notoriety only because of Lt-Gen Malik’s seniority and position in the Q-League.

Abbas for his part, besides being nazim in 2001, was a Punjab minister and a staunch political PPP loyalist in Benazir Bhutto’s second stint as prime minister. During Musharraf’s referendum in 2002 he declared at a public meeting that the only leader he accepted was Musharraf. His family members originally styled themselves as chaudhris. In the 1960s they took to calling themselves sardars. Their ancestral village is still ‘Kot Chaudrian’.

In Pakistan your name doesn’t have to figure in Burke’s Peerage for you to assume a suitable title. We have the example in Chakwal of a farmer from village Dheedwal who one day decided to cultivate a Baloch beard and become ‘Sardar’ Mehr Khan. Today everyone calls him by this name. Possessed of an engaging manner, he is quite a likeable fellow.

Running with Abbas for the position of Tehsil Nazim Chakwal is his cousin, Taabi Khan, who has a bit of a reputation as a small-time toughie. He goes around with bodyguards and stuff like that and his known specialty is to get ‘monthlies’ from transport owners. If with Ch Pervaiz Elahi’s blessings he and Abbas make it, no one should be surprised if Chakwal becomes a model of good governance.

The United Front comprising the PML-N, the PPP and the MMA had decided — at my Chakwal residence, incidentally — that it would support anyone who stood against the Q-League’s nazim candidate. Malik being the only one in the field, the only option before the United Front was to support him. It is still doing that even though it has faced a few minor desertions.

The PPP component led by Sardar Nawab Khan — at whose house in fact the UF was formed — kept assuring the UF that it stood by its collective decision. So it was a bit surprising when Nawab, even when assuring the UF of his steadfastness, slipped over to Abbas’s side.

Pir Shaukat of Karooli was also part of the UF until one fine morning it emerged that his brother, Pir Sajid, was Abbas’s nominee for tehsil nazim Kallar Kahar. Given Shaukat’s colourful political career, there were few surprises in this conversion. During Benazir’s first prime ministership he became head of something called the People’s Works Programme. No sooner was Benazir ousted in 1990 than he bolted to the PML-N and joined Gen Malik. When Malik went into the Q-League, Shaukat went with him.

Hoping to get a provincial ticket from the Q-League in the 1990 elections, Shaukat was disappointed when Malik chose someone else. He contested those elections from the platform of the PML-N. Now he and his brothers are back in the Q-League. No doubt they’ll again take the right decision when circumstances change.

Is any justification left for Gen Malik to stay in the Q-League? Lesser mortals might think not but, whatever happens, bet on it that Malik will stay in the Q-League, his nephew Tahir Iqbal will stay as a minister in Shaukat Aziz’s cabinet and be a Q-League candidate in the 2007 elections. No one got very far with a thin skin in politics.

I almost forgot. A few days back Pervaiz Elahi called a meeting in Lahore of the Chakwal Q-League and in near-threatening tones asked Aslam Sethi, Q-League president District Chakwal, and Colonel Sultan Surkhroo, provincial parliamentary secretary, to support Abbas. To Pervez’s face they refused.

Sultan Surkhroo and Aslam Sethi’s son have since been removed as provincial parliamentary secretaries while a sub-inspector of the Talagang Saddar police station came to take away Surkhroo’s official car. I never thought much of Sethi and Surkhroo before. My respect for them has since increased.