A HUNDRED or so villagers gather at the dera of a local landowner in Ramke, a village that is a half-an-hour’s drive from Gujrat city, to hear what Nawabzada Ghazanfar Ali Gul, the ticket holder of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) for the national seat from Jalalpur Jattan, has to say.
As Gul rises to speak, he chooses to focus mostly on the style of politics (allegedly) practised by his opponents — the Chaudhrys of Gujrat: Shujaat Hussain and Pervez Elahi. “They can’t win a free and fair election. They depend on the military’s patronage for their electoral success,” thunders the Nawabzada, trying to recapture the magic that had bagged him the seats in 1993, on a Pakistan Peoples Party ticket.
Two decades later, his elder brother retook the seat from the Chaudhrys in 2013, this time, on a PML-N ticket. Gul did not contest that election because he had refused to ditch the PPP despite pressure from his family that had already switched over to the PML-N. In that election, under a controversial deal, the PPP had not fielded candidates against the Chaudhrys who were leading the Pakistan Muslim League-Q.
This time around, the Chaudhrys have put up Hussain Elahi against Gul. Hussain’s father Wajahat Hussain, the younger brother of Shujaat Hussain, cannot contest because of health issues, but he won the seat twice in 2002 and 2008.
“We have made this area safer for you,” Gul tells the gathering. “I don’t have to remind you how insecure we all felt five years back when the armed goons of our opponents walked in the streets. It is a different place today. What’s the use of roads and drains if your life and property aren’t safe?”
Then he moves on to the Chaudhrys’ electoral losses in the last polls. “Both the PPP and the PML-N have seen bad days and survived,” Gul says, setting himself up to deliver the punch line. “The PML-Q couldn’t even survive once the establishment withdrew its support from them. They are always looking for someone to lean on — Ziaul Haq, Nawaz Sharif, Pervez Musharraf and now, it is Imran Khan.
But even Gul allied with the Sharifs after a long stint with the ‘last batch of the typical PPP jiyalas’. This speech of his, meant to woo voters during a canvassing round on Wednesday, was a reminder of the fact that everything political in Gujrat continues to revolve around the Chaudhrys.
When you think of Gujrat’s politics you think of the Chaudhrys — Shujaat and Pervez. The two cousins have dominated the city’s political landscape ever since the ‘mantle’ to advance the legacy of Chaudhry Zahoor Elahi was passed on to them after his murder 37 years ago.