Pakistan’s vivid candidates
THERE is the ecologist, the “semi-corrupt”, the opportunist, and the indestructible. Alongside Pakistan’s mainstream politicians a battery of flamboyant candidates are contesting nationwide elections on July 25.
Here are four who each embody the myriad challenges facing the country.
Ayaz Memon Motiwala, the ecologist
Ayaz Memon Motiwala campaigns from the gutters.
Running as an independent in Karachi, Motiwala prefers to get his anti-corruption, proenvironment message out as he lies in pools of sewage.
“If they do not cover the gutters then this is my right to sit inside the gutter and protest,” Motiwala tells AFP.
Motiwala has chosen the water tap as his election symbol.
Water is a highly charged issue, with experts saying Pakistan faces “absolute scarcity” by 2025.
“Vote for me – but even if you don’t – please remember that clean water is the need of hour,” Motiwala tells voters.
Radesh Singh Tony, the brave
Radesh Singh Tony is the first independent candidate from Pakistan’s Sikh minority to run i n nor t hwester n Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
The odds are heavily stacked against Tony in a constituency populated with around 130,000 mostly Muslim registered voters, compared to just 160 Sikhs.
His two opponents come from parties backed by hardline religious organisations.
The contest comes just months after local Sikh community leader Charanjeet Singh was shot dead, and weeks after an bomb attack killed over 20 people at an election rally in the provincial capital.
If elected, Tony has vowed to serve all communities equally.
“We are vulnerable targets,” Tony says. “We are campaigning in an atmosphere of fear.”
Ali Wazir, the indestructible
Ali Wazir’s losses in the coun- try’s long war with insurgents are horrifying.
Wazir has had 10 relatives killed by militants, who have also destroyed his home, orchards and petrol station since the military first took the fight to the Pakistani Taliban more than a decade ago.But he has never backed down.
Wazir has risen to prominence for taking the military to task over heavy-handedness against local civilians.
“I am contesting elections at the demands of my people,” said Wazir in an online video. “I will struggle for their rights.”
Nawab Amber Shahzada, 41 times defeated
Shahzada’s moustache is surmounted by sunglasses and a garnet headdress, while a thin red scarf adorns the neck of a candidate seeking to be the “king of politics”.
But Shahzada is a lonely king at the head of a party of which he is the only member, who in the last 32 years has competed in 41 elections, and never won one.
In 1990 his party was refused registration when he vowed to provide Pakistanis with residential plots on the moon.
But he says it’s all satire.
His slogan? “Need-based corruption”. If elected, Shahzada vows to be “semi-corrupt”.