PESHAWAR, Pakistan: Almost 6,500 candidates from 150 parties will stand in Pakistan’s election on Thursday but only around five per cent of them are women.
The constitution reserves seats for women in the provincial and national assemblies but parties rarely allow women to contest outside that quota.
AFP has interviewed three candidates pushing for change in their communities.
ISLAMIC INFLUENCER: YouTuber Zeba Waqar has built up a loyal following of several hundred thousand women online, but this week will be the first time she puts her popularity to the test in an election.
The first-time national candidate from the outskirts of Lahore, Pakistan’s second-largest city, is a member of Jamaat-e-Islami, a right-wing party centred around religion.
Each week women tune in to her broadcasts where she teaches them about their rights according to Islam and shares stories about Islamic history.
Here are some facts about how the electoral system works in Pakistan:
Pakistan is a parliamentary democracy and voting will take place for seats in the federal legislature, called the National Assembly, and four provincial, or state, legislatures.
128 million Pakistanis out of a population of 241 million are eligible to vote - all those above 18. Polling booths are open from 9am to 5pm (0400 GMT to 1200 GMT) usually but time can be extended in exceptional individual circumstances.
On election day, voters will cast their ballots for two legislators to represent their constituency - one federally and the other provincially. There are 5,121 candidates contesting for the federal legislature and 12,695 for the provinces.
The National Assembly consists of 336 seats — 266 are decided through direct voting on polling day, while 70 reserved seats — 60 for women and 10 for non-Muslims — are allotted according to the strength of each party in the house.
Victorious candidates become members of the National Assembly. Independent candidates have the option to join any party after the elections.
Once constituted, the National Assembly holds a parliamentary vote to select a leader of the house, who becomes the prime minister.
A successful candidate must show a simple majority in the house - that is, the support of at least 169 members.
Once a prime ministerial candidate wins the vote in the National Assembly, they are sworn in as prime minister. The new prime minister picks cabinet ministers, who form the federal government.
A similar process is followed at the provincial level to pick a chief minister and a provincial government.
-- Reuters
“My favourite are the broadcasts I do live on Facebook and YouTube. They feel like a one-on-one session. Sometimes I answer questions that people ask during the broadcasts. I do those from my study, sitting here,” she told AFP from her home.
A lot of those she preaches to are middle-class, elite women who are turning to social media for educational content, including absorbing bite-size posts on Instagram.
“We had a desire that the teaching of the Quran should not remain limited... We use Insta, Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp groups very efficiently,” she said.
A doctor by profession, who offers free care from home to women with low incomes, she put her large following down to being educated.
“Unfortunately, with education, a bit of arrogance also sneaks in. If you are a chartered accountant, you are not going to listen to an uneducated person’s lecture,” she explained.
The grandmother, who covers her face with a veil, also runs a live-in institute where young women, including graduates from top universities, can learn the Koran.
If elected, she wants to address the economic disadvantages facing women, improve their professional training and introduce stronger laws to reduce harassment.
FROM TRAGEDY TO TRIUMPH: Samar Haroon Bilour was the only woman in the room as she addressed dozens of men about her party’s plans to boost jobs for young people.
Still, it was a far cry from the 2018 election, when banners did not even feature her name or picture for fear it would look inappropriate in the socially conservative district.
“Men do not like a young, vibrant, outspoken, Westernised Pashtun woman,” she explained to AFP.
Bilour was propelled into politics under tragic circumstances, taking over her husband’s campaign when he was shot dead by militants shortly before the last election.
Violence often mars election campaigns in Pakistan, with two candidates shot dead in January in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
The attack on her husband, Haroon, was claimed by the Pakistan Taliban, she said, the most active group in the region that once controlled some border areas.
“I stepped into his shoes after his murder — it was one of the hardest things I had ever done, I was mentally not prepared,” she said, a picture of him framed beside her.
She became the first woman provincial MP in the provincial capital Peshawar, a city of nearly five million people nestled along the old Silk Road near the Afghan border and home to the Pashtun people — many of whom follow customs that restrict women’s movements in public.
When she stepped forward to continue her husband’s campaign for the anti-austerity Awami Workers Party, she faced immediate backlash from her rivals but persevered as a form of “revenge” against her husband’s killers.
“If they saw me smile, they would say things like, ‘oh, she is happy her husband is dead’,” she said.
But, after five years as an elected official, she believes attitudes are softening: “People want someone who gives time to the constituency regardless of what their gender is.”
FINDING RELIGIOUS HARMONY: Twenty-five-year-old Saveera Parkash makes little of the rarity of her profile in Pakistani politics - a young, Hindu woman in a deeply conservative area of the country.
Swaira, who recently graduated as a doctor, said she chose the religion for herself — a decision respected by her Sikh father and Christian mother in the Muslim-majority country.
“No religion in the world teaches a person to do bad deeds; every religion guides a person to do good deeds,” she said in a country fraught with religious tensions and which largely views feminism with suspicion.
While her constituency in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province has long lived in religious harmony, she told AFP, gender-based discrimination persists.
“So my foray into mainstream politics aims to combat such biases and foster inclusivity,” she said, mobbed by young voters as she walked through the city of Buner.
Never elected, she has led the women’s wing for the Bhutto dynasty’s Pakistan Peoples Party in the province.
“Until women play their role in society, stability cannot come to the country or the home,” she said.
“I may have to become a feminist because, in Buner, most women are deprived of their basic rights like education and health.”
A portion of her father’s private hospital has been converted into an election office and young men and women stream in to share their grievances and listen to her solutions.
“Choosing the power corridor is simply about serving the people. Without authority, one cannot serve the people in any way,” she said.
Here are the key players ahead of Pakistan vote
FORMER PRIME MINISTER NAWAZ SHARIF, PAKISTAN MUSLIM LEAGUE: Business mogul, multi-millionaire and three-time premier, Nawaz Sharif hails from one of the top two families that have dominated Pakistani politics for decades. His Pakistan Muslim League party won landslide victories in 2007 and 2013. But the 74-year-old Sharif has never completed a term in office and was ousted from power each time.
Like other Pakistani former prime ministers, Sharif has been dogged by legal cases and prison sentences.
FORMER PRIME MINISTER IMRAN KHAN, PAKISTAN TEHREEK-E-INSAF PARTY: A former cricket star turned Islamist politician, Imran Khan triumphed on an anti-corruption, anti-establishment platform in the 2018 election to form a coalition government. But his premiership was problematic as his administration cracked down on opposition figures.
Khan was ultimately ousted by parliament in April 2022, a move he tried to fight with street protests and claimed it was engineered by Washington and his opponents. He now has more than 150 legal cases against him and has been imprisoned since August, with four convictions for graft, revealing state secrets and breaking marriage laws. He has been sentenced to three, 10, 14 and seven years, to be served concurrently. His legal convictions have barred him from contesting the elections but his party is running and he still has a mass grassroots following.
BILAWAL BHUTTO-ZARDARI, PAKISTAN PEOPLE’S PARTY: The youngest hopeful for Pakistan’s next prime minister is Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, the son of the assassinated former Premier Benazir Bhutto and grandson of the country’s first democratically elected prime minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who led the nation in the 1970s and was overthrown and executed by the military.
Both Bhutto-Zardari’s mother and grandfather still command huge reverence among party supporters, handing him a captive audience.
