Fears Of Violence As Pakistani Election Nears

GUJRAT, Pakistan — The winners of what may be the most anticipated election this country has held will be settled the usual way on Monday, by the number of ballots and fierce arguments over how they are counted. That, and perhaps the number of guns.

The nationwide parliamentary elections are intended to usher in an era of democracy in Pakistan after months of political turmoil and nearly a decade of military rule under President Pervez Musharraf.

But here in Punjab Province, the biggest prize, the bare-knuckle election fight has included charges of armed intimidation by the police and private militias, as well as bribes through government favors. The threat of violence and the suspicion of rigging hang thick in the air. There has even been bickering over who should operate the polling stations.

A street-level view of the campaign, in fact, reveals the many stubborn shortcomings of Pakistan’s politics, where the parties are organized less around policies than people, often from feudal families who have held sway for generations.

This election battle is especially sharp because Punjab is the home of the political patrons of Mr. Musharraf, the powerful and hard-nosed Chaudhry clan, which is working hard to keep its grip across the province, Pakistan’s most populous. The scion of the family, Chaudhry Pervez Elahi, a confidant of Mr. Musharraf, is the president’s choice to be the next prime minister should his party win.

On the other side, Asif Ali Zardari, husband of the assassinated opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, and now the leader of the opposition Pakistan Peoples Party, asserts that his forces will sweep much of Punjab’s rich harvest of 147 parliamentary seats, ensuring a victory for his party, if the voting is free and fair.

The question on everyone’s minds is how free and fair will the elections be.

Ahmad Mukhtar, a wealthy businessman and longtime stalwart of Ms. Bhutto’s, has made a special fuss about guns.

The Chaudhrys, he asserts, use a private family militia and the Punjab police to intimidate voters. The intention, he said, is to keep his supporters away from the polls and tip the vote in favor of the incumbent, Chaudhry Shujaat, the chairman of Mr. Musharraf’s party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Q.

An independent group, the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency visited Gujrat last week, and in its report Feb. 11 said “a general atmosphere of fear was detected among candidates and workers of parties opposed to Chaudhry Shujaat and his group.”

The group recommended that the army should be deployed in Gujrat on election day because that was the best way to prevent “a major threat of violence.”

To counter the Chaudhry forces, Mr. Mukhtar, who has run against Mr. Shujaat five times, and won once, said he felt compelled to organize his own election day security force. They are 160 armed men from a private security company.

If the army failed to keep the peace on Monday, these men would be deployed if Chaudhry forces arrived at polling stations. He was especially worried that the Chaudhrys would try to stop voting at polling stations where his vote is particularly strong, a time-tested technique in Pakistan, Mr. Mukhtar said.

As well, Mr. Mukhtar has readied a flotilla of young men on motorcycles, armed with long sticks and cellphones. They will be dispatched on election day at the first sign of disturbances from the opposing side, he said.

Most upsetting, Mr. Mukhtar said, are the armed men — “goons” he called them — who operate as the “Wajahat Force.” Chaudhry Wajahat, the younger brother of his election rival, Mr. Shujaat, is advertised on banners around Gujrat as the “commander of the Wajahat force,” a group that Mr. Mukhtar says is an “illegal army.”

A photograph submitted by Mr. Mukhtar, the opposition candidate, in a complaint to the Election Commission of Pakistan showed a photograph of Mr. Wajahat’s force at a rally. Mr. Mukhtar said he had not received any reply from the commission on the matter.

“When we first went to villages, they were not prepared to invite us in they were so scared that there would be retaliation,” Mr. Mukhtar said. “But then we went with 14 or 15 people with guns, and they did a lot of aerial firing to show we are with you. It was to say if the Chaudhrys have guns we will protect you with guns.”

So at a rally for Mr. Mukhtar this week in the village of Khojanwali, six miles south of Gujrat, a group of young men sat beside the red carpeted stage with AK-47s at their sides.

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