| 18 August 2004 | Wednesday | 01 Rajab 1425 |
The Shaukat Mirage
Pakistan's poorest and least developed district braces itself to send a billionaire banker to the PM's office.
They have come from all over the desert, from one end of Tharparker to the other. True, the National Assembly constituency NA-229, the focus of this fanfare, does not include the whole of Thar. But who cares. For the poverty-hit, fun-starved people of this 20,000-square-kilometre wasteland, the desert heat is not reason enough to deny an offer that includes a free ride and a midday meal. Wearing soiled clothes, Sindhi caps, occasional ajraks and festive airs, groups of Tharis can be seen disembarking from kekras, the locally modified trucks dating from the second world war. Others are moving towards the huge pindal erected on the open ground beside the road that connects Mithi, the headquarters of the district, with Naukot, district Mirpurkhas. Closer to the pindal, people are lining up to get inside. Most of them do not know who the visiting dignitaries are. But some do. "Shaukat Aziz is coming," speculates one peasant, standing in the queue. Another corrects him. "Aziz Memon is coming," he says.
So much for the voters who are going to elect (or unelect) Shaukat Aziz as the country's next prime minister in a by-election on August 18. As for the constituency which Aziz seeks to represent, it is lost somewhere in the southernmost borderland of the country where his five-year-old economic revolution is yet to kick in. The question is, how does the billionaire super-banker expect the unrefined and underprivileged people of Thar to relate to him in an election? There are two possible answers. One comes from Aziz himself. Addressing Tharis at the pindal on that fine morning of July 7 when he came to Mithi to file his nomination papers, he revealed: "I was offered 15 to 20 seats. I accepted one offered by prime minister Shujaat Hussain. For the second, I decided to contest from an underdeveloped area and meet the challenge of turning around the lives of people there."
The second and perhaps more authentic answer lies in the desire of the rulers to field Shaukat Aziz from "safe" seats - seats which are in the iron-grip of the ruling PMLQ either due to the influence of its local feudal partners, or where voters are most likely to submit to strong-arm tactics of the administration. NA-59, Attock, the second seat from which Aziz intends to contest on August 18, belongs to the first category, while NA-229 Tharparkar belongs to the second.
Like Thar, voters in Attock face the unique prospect of voting for a candidate who has already been declared the country's prime minister and is being accorded prime-ministerial protocol. In addition, the present prime minister Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain has foreshadowed election results by declaring that he will be stepping down on August 19. These two factors alone should create enough impact on the so-called "floating" votes, though observers do not expect a close contest in which such votes can tilt the balance or throw up surprises.
Attock's NA-59 was created under new delimitations in 2002 as a "safe" seat for pro-government forces. It was carved in such a way as to leave the native towns of both the former PMLN MNAs of the district out, thereby neutralising their influence on this seat. The present limits of this constituency include 14 union councils (UCs) of tehsil Fatehjang, eight UCs of tehsil Hasanabdal, two UCs of tehsil Attock as well as the area comprising the Pakistan Ordnance Factory at Sanjwal. Despite a substantial working class vote in Hasanabdal, Burhan and Sanjwal areas, the Khattar clan holds the majority vote.
ARD's candidate for the seat, Dr Sikandar Hayat, is a Khattar and should have had a native's advantage against a rank outsider like Shaukat Aziz. But bickering within the ARD camp delayed his campaign which, observers think, may prove to be an enduring disadvantage against a highly organised PMLQ camp. In fact, aggressive campaigning by the PMLQ, who have the federal, provincial as well as the district government on their side, has altogether drowned this issue at the moment. Official patronage of Shaukat Aziz's campaign was on full display during his visit to the area on July 28.
The seat has been vacated for him by Eman Wasim, daughter of Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain's sister. Eman's grandfather, Sardar Mohammad Sadiq Khan, also a Khattar, has won a provincial assembly seat from Attock more than once. After his death, his wife Musarrat Sadiq Khan, too, remained an MPA. Eman's father, Major (retd) Tahir Sadiq, became a PMLN MPA in 1997 and sided with Pervez Elahi when the latter fell out of favour with the then chief minister Shahbaz Sharif. In 2001, Tahir Sadiq won the local bodies elections by a small margin and became district nazim Attock. Over the last three years, however, political realignments in the district have helped him consolidate his position. Powerful former rivals such as Malik Allahyar Khan have become his allies. A number of PPP and PMLN losers and winners in the last local and general elections have since switched to PMLQ. In this shifting scenario, his daughter Eman was able to win the 2002 elections without personally conducting a campaign. She received over 65,000 votes, which is 3,000 more than the votes polled by the PPP, PMLN and MMA put together. And even though the three parties are now backing PPP's Sikandar Hayat, unofficially the PMLN and MMA cadres are not showing an active interest in the election.
Although both Attock and Thar have been former PPP strongholds, the voter profile in Thar is markedly different from that in Attock. In NA-229, which comprises Mithi, Diplo, Islamkot and a portion of Chachro, the Hindu community constitutes almost one half of the approximately 256,000 votes. Moreover, their remote location and extreme poverty make Tharis amenable to intimidation, something the Sindh chief minister Arbab Rahim and his clan have allegedly been practicing effectively with the backing of the Pakistani establishment.
Arbab Rahim won NA-229 in 2002 but opted for his provincial seat and fielded his nephew Arbab Zakaullah in the by-election. Zaka, who won unopposed, has now vacated this seat for Shaukat Aziz. Mahesh Mallani, a PPP old-timer and the party's current candidate against Aziz, was also a candidate against Zaka and had withdrawn from the contest on the party's instructions. "Arbab Zaka had assured us then that if he won he would join the PPP," Mallani claims.
Mallani's disadvantages are legion. The foremost is party chief Benazir Bhutto's absence from the country. Says one PPP activist: "We can only win if Benazir leads the campaign in person. The influence of the Arbabs runs deep in the area." PPP supporters have also suffered long at the hands of the establishment and are demoralised. "When the henchmen of the Arbabs beat up people in Chachro and filed false cases against them for having voted for the PPP candidate in previous elections, the PPP neither helped them in getting medical aid nor pursued their cases in the courts," says the PPP activist. Besides, the PPP has mostly been fielding candidates who hail from what the local people describe as "irrigated" areas and who therefore do not understand the problems of the waterless Tharis. "You only see them at election time. After that they disappear," says a Mithi resident.
By comparison, Shaukat Aziz, though an outsider, is the future prime minister who is being recommended by the chief minister of Sindh, himself a Thari. Says one excited Thari: "This is the first time that both the prime minister and chief minister would be from Thar. Maybe that will change our people's lives." Mallani, on the other hand, "would sit on the opposition benches if he won and would be powerless to defend his voters against the Arbabs' wrath." The Arbabs, in tandem with Hindu Thakurs, swept both the National Assembly seats and four provincial assembly seats from Thar in 2002.
Observers and election analysts say that the sweep was a result of a two-pronged strategy. First, they allegedly manipulated voting in remote polling stations deep in this vast desert where no road and phone links exist. On at least 60 such polling stations, they were able to show 100 per cent votes in their favour. Overall, the Arbabs lost the vote count on two-thirds of the polling stations in NA-229, points out one analyst. However, they polled enough votes on the remaining one-third to win the entire race. Second, they allegedly punished voters in areas where they had lost the vote count. Journalists in Hyderabad still remember large numbers of residents of Chachro village who had been beaten black and blue reportedly by the Arbabs' henchmen and then implicated in false cases. Nursing wounds that still looked fresh, they appeared en masse before the Hyderabad bench of the Sindh High Court to apply for bail.
The stakes this time are much higher. Arbab Ghulam Rahim's reputation is on the line. Observers appear to have a clear picture of what is to happen. The Nohri community, to which the Arbabs belong, have a sizeable presence in the constituency. So do the Thakurs. They will both support Shaukat Aziz. A majority of the Mithi residents, who are mostly government servants and can be effectively threatened with unwanted postings or outright suspensions, are also likely to toe the government's line. The local Memons are a trading community and would like to avoid a confrontation with the government. As for the scheduled caste Hindus such as the Kohlis, Bheels and Megwars, who constitute a majority of the Hindu community, they can be beaten into submission with impunity as they are the most deprived and voiceless segment of the population of Pakistan.
In the words of one observer: "It must be a great feeling to be Shaukat Aziz at this time. From banker to finance minister to senator to MNA and finally prime minister, you have your life cut out for you." - Courtesy Herald
