THE election in Rahim Yar Khan is a clash of titans, including pirs, landlords, industrialists and businessmen, and the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, Pakistan People’s Party and the Pakistan Muslim League-N are more brand names than parties. Not to forget the PML-Functional, a party based on the family and personal influence of the former PML-Q-supported Makhdoom Syed Ahmad Mahmood, a relative of Pir Pagara.

The biggest landlord’s power is being enjoyed by his brother-in-law and former federal minister Jehangir Khan Tareen, known as ‘a friend of President Musharraf’ and once tipped to be the prime minister of the country.

The opulence of the feudal and industrial estates and blind reverence for the pirs and makhdooms is superimposed by the wealth and influence of the ‘kingmaker’, Chaudhry Munir.

He is said to be putting his weight behind the PML-Q because of his friendship with Punjab party president Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi and President Pervez Musharraf’s confidant Tariq Aziz. This is in addition to the state power being wielded by the district and tehsil nazims, the local administration and police who, wherever they have to, can tilt only towards the PML-Q.

The voters usually to address these influential people as ‘Wada Sain’ and ‘Pir Sain’ can hardly expected to be independent. They are uneducated and neglected, used to living on the bare minimum of food and shelter. Called ‘Poli dey Puttar’ (the children of a lesser God) these men, women and children who work in the fields and the mills are yet to learn the art of claiming their wages as their right -- what to speak of voting on their own.

The PML-Q boasts of carrying out development worth over Rs62 billion in the vast district. This development is mainly manifest in the new ‘jeepable’ roads which would make the affluent and resourceful Lahore proud. Please note the emphasis on jeepable.

Along these roads live people who are forced to drink water contaminated by sewage and live without education and health facilities. “The city combines the richest and the poorest,” a local resident wryly comments. A mini-Pakistan!

The people in Rahim Yar Khan appear disinterested in the electioneering and are perturbed by the law and order situation, inflation and loadshedding. They want change, how they don’t know. In the rural areas, the Makhdooms of Jamaldinwali and Mianwali Qureshian are canvassing vigorously.

The district has four tehsils -- Rahim Yar Khan, Liaquatpur, Khanpur and Sadiqabad. According to the 1998 census, it has a population of 3.14 million, majority of which living in the Rahim Yar Khan Tehsil. The district has over 1.718 million voters and six National Assembly and 13 Punjab assembly seats.

The divide is between Seraiki Makhdooms of Liaquatpur, Jamaldinwali and Mianwali Qureshian and the Rais family and settlers, including Arains and Jatts who are mainly in the urban centres.

The PML-Q and the PPP are the main contestants. Benazir Bhutto acknowledged the importance she attaches to Rahim Yar Khan when she held a big rally here on Monday. The PML-N is a late entrant but hopes to upset its opponents after the expected visit of Nawaz Sharif to the district on Tuesday (today). Besides the PPP and the PML-N, the PML-Q also has to counter the PML-F of its former friends, Makhdoom Ahmad Mehmood and Jehangir Tareen, and is faced with the prospects of an in-house division of votes.

The candidates of the PPP, the PML-N and the PML-F do admit to the influence of the PML-Q in the district “because of its hold over the local government and due to money and links with Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi and President Musharraf”. But while they fear rigging, they hope the silent majority “fed up with Gujrat-style politics” would vote them in.

The PML-Q candidates retort that their main strength is the massive development initiatives of the last government.

Dawn catches up with PML-Q’s Makhdoom Khusro Bakhtiar just when he is about to leave his huge farmhouse for a round of corner meetings. He expects his party to sweep the district, once a PPP stronghold that the “PML-Q has won over with its massive development work and service to people”.

“They believe in me and the party’s potential to give them an even better future. I have electrified 486 villages and given livelihood to people through farm-to-market roads,” Makhdoom Bakhtiar says.

He denies using the influence of Chaudhry Munir or the district administration and dismisses these allegations as cries of people facing defeat. Zafar Iqbal Warraich, PML-Q’s candidate from Rahim Yar Khan city, echoes the views.

Sitting in his own big farmhouse, PPP’s Makhdoom Shahabuddin sees a ‘silent revolution’ round the corner. “The people want to get rid of the PML-Q,” he says, while adding that his party hopes to win five of the six NA and nine PA seats.

“We will win because of three factors -- BB’s popularity, people yearning for real leaders and, of course, PML-Q’s poor performance and its systematic corruption,” he says. “You can’t eat roads,” he adds in reference to PML-Q’s development boasts.

That would be against heavy odds, because Makhdoom Shahab alleges the government has established ghost polling stations in the district and claims the mysterious Chaudhry Munir had called the city administration and nazims two weeks ago to discuss ways to ensure victory of the PML-Q candidates. “We will not allow their plan to succeed. We will foil their designs. The turnout is going to be good,” he vows.

Makhdoom Shahab terms the PML-N a friendly organisation and the PML-F a spoiler.

Makhdoom Ahmad Mehmood and Mr Jehangir Tareen of the PML Functional have other ideas though. As Dawn approaches them, they have just spoken to a meeting of their supporters inside their sugar mill in Jamaldinwali.

They speak of Chaudhry Munir and Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi in the same vein and say they had to face the worst kind of suppression at the hands of the two Chaudhris over the past four years.

“I was the district nazim and Tareen a federal minister -- facts that did not go down well with Chaudhry Pervaiz,” says Makhdoom Ahmad Mahmood. “With his backing Chaudhry Munir had me removed by creating his group here. My family was divided and I was made to suffer in business.

They tried to hijack my influence. They introduced Gujrat-style politics, but we are going to assure that they fail. People are angry over inflation, unemployment and loadshedding and they are going to reject the PML-Q.”

Chaudhry Jaffar Iqbal, another famous name from the area, hopes that the district will vote for his party, the PML-N. “We are going to the people and the visit by Mian Nawaz Sharif would turn the tables,” he says and warns: “If the PML-Q is declared the winner in the polls, an agitation will start on Jan 9. Like what happened in 1977, people will not accept engineered results.”