Focus on Punjab-I: Local politics dressed up as nationalCyril Almeida | Front Page | From the Newspaper November 10, 2011
JHELUM: The GT Road’s reputation as Sharif country was forged in the urban, middle-class trading and small-business communities that dot this famous 16th century highway. But even in this sleepy, largely rural martial district in northern Punjab, the PML-N appears to be the party to beat.
In 2008, the PML-N won all six of the seats in Jhelum district, two MNAs and four MPAs. (One MPA, Muhammad Saqlain, was elected as an independent but with the support of the N-League). The sweep was unprecedented, surpassing even the results of the ZAB era in the 1970s.
And yet, the view from the constituency level is markedly different.
While national political trends play a significant role and candidates compete aggressively for party tickets, for the most part the politics of Jhelum is rooted in biradirism (kinship and clan associations), dharras (political groupings) and personalities.
So dominant are these local factors that politics here has been reduced to a pithy sound bite by locals: Raja vs anti-Raja.
The Rajas are the powerful group led by Raja Afzal, a septuagenarian who has installed his sons as MNAs and is regarded by one and all as the real powerbroker in the district. Entering politics in 1985 and eventually displacing the Rajas of Darapur as the leader of the Rajputs, Mr Afzal has proved a master of the art of local politics.
The Raja dharra — lashed together by Mr Afzal through a combination of skill, ruthlessness and political savvy — consists of several overlapping voter groups: large parts of the Rajput biradiri; voters for whom Mr Afzal has manipulated the
thanna/katcheri (police and courts) system to their advantage; and the PML-N voter in the urban areas.
The anti-Raja group is headed by Chaudhry Farrukh Altaf, a two-term district nazim under Gen Musharraf and son of the late Governor of Punjab Altaf Hussain. Belonging to the Jat biradiri and aligned with the PML-Q, Farrukh Altaf has an unfortunate track record of losing elections, though supporters maintain his core group, the Chaudhrys’ dharra, is as strong as Raja Afzal’s.
Building a dharra
From his elaborately decorated drawing room in Jhelum city, Farrukh Altaf explained the foundation of electoral success in the district: “You can’t win anything without maintaining links at the local level. Sometimes I have 20 weddings a day to attend. Funerals are also important. Then you have to answer your phone. Voters demand direct access. Someone’s Wapda bill is excessive, someone else can’t get a child admitted to school, someone wants a traffic challan waived off or has an issue with a patwari. Everyone wants to know, can my candidate deliver?”
Perhaps no politician has delivered as consistently in the recent history of Jhelum as Raja Afzal. Friend and foe alike described Mr Afzal as a formidable politician, knowing when a soft touch is required and when to deploy the full force of the state and local machinery for personal and political gain. Mr Afzal was away performing Haj and unavailable for comment.
According to Kenan Ahmed Raja, a PML-N organiser in Jhelum city: “The great thing about the buzurg (old man) is that he may not get your work done, but he’ll treat you with respect. That matters.”
Kayani, of Sohawa tehsil, said: “The ‘other castes’, the agricultural workers and service classes, are probably the most numerous here. Before they were told, ‘You belong to us, you vote for us’. But Raja Afzal refers to them as ‘bhai’ and goes to their homes. Even though they are rich now, they still have a non-caste complex, so they are happy when a Raja comes to their house and they become his supporters.”
PML-N infighting
Winning over voters is one thing, fending off rivals, even those on the same party ticket, is another.
“The story in Jhelum is Raja Afzal versus his MPAs,” according to Ayaz Amir, MNA in neighbouring Chakwal district. “Afzal tends to dominate his MPAs and they react, but he’s close to Nawaz Sharif,” Amir added.
The MPAs’ animosity towards Afzal is barely contained. MPA Chaudhry Nadeem Khadim, a scion of a leader in the fractious Gujjar community, said: “Raja Afzal is corrupt. Taking money, grabbing land, I’m not interested in this kind of politics. I’d rather leave politics than be on same ticket as Raja Afzal.”
He added: “I have good relations with Shahbaz Sharif and have a strong following among the Gujjars. I intend to intend to get a PML-N ticket for the national assembly seat and win.”
Another MPA, Chaudhry Muhammad Saqlain, an outspoken Jat politician with an independent streak, was also scathing: “Raja Afzal has restarted that old politics of looting and theft, land grabbing and narcotics peddling. The voters are sick of it.”As long as Raja Afzal enjoys the support of Nawaz Sharif, however, it is unlikely he will face a serious challenge from within the PML-N.
Potentially more problematic is if the disgruntled MPAs carry their support bases to the Farrukh Altaf camp.
Switching sides is fairly common: in 2008, Muhammad Saqlain, the MPA, supported Afzal’s son on a National Assembly ticket with the sole purpose, by Saqlain’s own admission, of defeating the Farrukh Altaf candidate on the MPA seat through reciprocal support from the PML-N/Afzal group.
Now, if a joint Saqlain-Altaf candidate is fielded in the next election and he defeats the Afzal camp, on paper it would be chalked up as a defeat for the PML-N. But in reality it would have little to do with national politics.
PPP, PML-Q and PTI
An additional concern for the Raja Afzal group is the seat-adjustment deal between the PPP and PML-Q. “The PML-N can only be challenged if there is a strong candidate from Q or PPP,” according to Ayaz Amir. The poll numbers also suggest so.
In the 2008 election, in NA-62, the combined PML-Q and PPP vote was 81,500, just 11,000 short of the winning PML-N candidate, Raja Safdar, who got 92,500. In NA-63, the combined PML-Q-PPP vote was 76,000, just a few thousand shy of the nearly 80,000 that Raja Asad, the other son of Raja Afzal, won.
With the PPP’s individual position weak — party candidates contesting the NA seats got just 10-15 per cent of the votes polled in 2008 — the Farrukh Altaf camp will likely field its own candidates on the PML-Q ticket.
According to Altaf, given the ‘synergies’ in the PPP-PML-Q vote bank in Jhelum — his father was once allied with the PPP and as governor helped engineer the ouster of the Sharif-led government in Punjab in the early 1990s — the switch for voters from PPP to PML-Q would not be very problematic.
Of course, if the PTI earthquake in Lahore is repeated in northern Punjab, all bets are off. Could the Farrukh Altaf group ditch the PML-Q for PTI tickets if the possibility arose?
Farrukh Altaf’s response to why he was still aligned with the PML-Q was telling: “Because the PPP is weak here.” With the PML-N ticket stitched up by Raja Afzal and the PPP no longer a very attractive prospect in Jhelum, the PML-Q is home by
default for the Farrukh Altaf group. Until, that is, a more enticing prospect comes along, like the PTI.
While rivals calculate feverishly, the man who will be the most confident ahead of the next elections in Jhelum is Raja Afzal. A repeat of the 2008 sweep for the PML-N/Afzal group seems unlikely because the national-mood factor is no longer in the N-League’s favour, but Afzal has the skill, support and resources necessary to engineer wins in several constituencies of this predominantly rural district.
“Ultimately, the politics of Jhelum is about the politics of biradiri,” according to Fawad Chaudhry, a close relative of Farrukh Altaf. “Rajput versus Jat and the Gujjars playing the swing vote. It’s always been that way.”
This is the first in a multi-part series on the politics of northern and central Punjab along the GT road.
lovely moment
Its better than having PPP flags all over Islamabad, on every street, specially constitution avenue
I´m from Chakwal, close to both 
