The Chaudhrys of Gujrat may have brought prosperity to their constituency but they have not won over everyone in their hometown

Gigantic billboards of election candidates are hard to miss in Gujrat. Dominant among them are of Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, the president of the Pakistan Muslim League – Quaid-e-Azam (PMLQ). Every single board that the president of the PMLQ peers down from is sponsored by one builder or the other. Shujaat Hussain’s younger brother Wajahat Hussain says this is because builders are the “new moneyed men” in the area. “There is a lot of money in real estate and construction. Most other businesses are not as lucrative,” he tells the Herald while on the campaign trail for his elder brother in the National Assembly’s constituency NA-105.

Their opponents say the builders are supporting the Chaudhrys for the simple reason that they have made quick bucks on the back of the development policies that have been pursued in the recent past. Construction of roads is one such policy. “A road raises the price of the lands it passes through and its construction provides opportunities for commissions and exorbitant profits,” says a Gujrat-based journalist not wanting to be named. He mentions some roads in the city which have been built and then rebuilt — within the last three years. “Sometimes this has meant laying down a fresh layer of asphalt on a surface that was quite good to begin with,” he adds.

But not all the roads in Gujrat are as smooth as they should be. A road leading out of Gujrat city into a large town called Sook Kalan is not just strewn with manholes at some places it has been reduced to a slippery, muddy track. “Use of substandard material and lack of official oversight has led to road surfaces vanishing far sooner than they should,” says the journalist. “The money gets divided between the builders and their political benefactors who award the road-building contracts.”

But neither are roads the only development activity in Gujrat and nor are the builders the only rich people in the city. The outgoing government and its local representatives claim credit for providing natural gas to the local residents. They also make it a point to mention the newly-opened University of Gujrat on the city’s rural outskirts, where undergraduate and postgraduate instructions in some subjects is already being offered. According to local residents, it is indeed a long overdue educational initiative. “Many girls would not acquire education beyond what was possible at the existing colleges in the city. Parents did not want to send them to Lahore or Islamabad for higher education. This university will certainly help overcome this problem,” says the excited father of a female student of the university.

The outgoing government has also brought the National Commission for Human Development in Gujrat to work in education and health sectors. Though the critics of the commission say it’s doing nothing, it has nevertheless provided employment opportunities to local men. Hundreds of others have landed government jobs in departments such as police, education and various rescue services started by the previous provincial government headed by Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi, the co-head of the Chaudhry family along with Shujaat Hussain, and the PMLQ’s candidate for the premiership of the country.

These jobs, however, are not the only source of apparent prosperity in and around Gujrat. The city has a number of major industries, including the electric appliances manufacturing, which generate jobs and thousands of young men born here are now working in the West. “In Norway alone, out of a total of 40,000 Pakistanis working there, 25,000 are from Gujrat,” says Waseem Butt, Dawn newspaper’s local correspondent.

All this wealth shows. On almost every road veering into the countryside big, brightly painted houses seem to dominate a host of other smaller, traditionally built abodes. Inside the city, roads and streets look cleaner than in Lahore. However, the electricity cuts throw a pall of gloom across the city — and not just once a day.

The other big shadow lurking ominously over the city is that of Wajahat Hussain who lives in an imposing riverside white palace with Greek pillars, a wide and long driveway, expansive drawing rooms and multi-acre lawns. Variously called commander, supreme commander, brave-heart supreme commander, he heads the Wajahat Force — a motley crowd of young supporters who some residents allege are involved in illegal activities including threatening political opponents and scaring ordinary citizens. This scare is generally more visible in the rural areas than in the city. The rural folk are even afraid of expressing their electoral choices lest they be overheard by his gun-toting tough guys.

Though Wajahat Hussain himself is not sure how people started calling him commander et al., he explains that the force is a political organisation. “It comprises young men who mostly come from well off and respected families. They started the force after a ban on student unions prevented the formation of the Muslim Students Federation,” he tells the Herald.

His opponents claim that he uses the Wajahat Force and violence to keep their supporters away from electioneering. Some of them say that the only way to counter these tactics is to pay back in the same coin. “Unless you assure your supporters that you can go to any length to protect them, including the use of violence, people will be scared of coming out and supporting you,” says Mian Fakhar Paganwala, a senior leader of the Pakistan People’s Party’s local chapter.

His party’s candidate opposing Shujaat Hussain in NA-105, Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar, is also acutely aware of the need to match his rivals bullet for bullet. When he stands up to deliver a speech at an election gathering at Sook Kalan, one of his excited supporters lets off ammunition in the air. “If they want to coerce our voters and capture polling booths, we also have the means and the will to do the same,” he thunders to a roaring applause.

After Benazir Bhutto’s death, however, her party’s workers and leaders in Gujrat feel that public anger against the Chaudhrys has reached such a level where people might not be cowed down by coercion. “People are angry here and they see voting for her party as one way of expressing this anger,” says Mukhtar.

Paganwala, meanwhile, is focusing on how to combat the Chaudhrys and their armed might. “If they resort to using violence, we will not hold back,” he tells the Herald. In his view, signs are not encouraging for a peaceful election in Gujrat. Independent observers say things may not come to such a pass because people are no longer scared. “The local protest after Bhutto’s death has shown that people are no longer afraid of anyone,” Waseem Butt of Dawn says, but adds that the Chaudhrys are still resorting to strong-arm tactics. “Only a few days ago the police picked up a young man for arranging a meeting for Mukhtar. Instead of producing him in the court of law, he was presented before Wajahat Hussain who told him not to canvass for Mukhtar,” Butt reveals.

Mian Imran Masood, a PMLQ candidate for a provincial assembly seat in Gujrat, says such allegations are baseless. “Our opponents are spending more time dispatching complaints against us to the election authorities than in canvassing for themselves,” he tells the Herald.

For the time being Gujrat appears tense but calm. The conflicts and threats of violence lurking beneath the surface, however, may erupt with the smallest of instigation.