PESHAWAR: A woman contender from Pakistan’s northwestern province of Fata and a couple of others from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa made headlines in national and international media after jumping into the election arena, but none of them could win any seat either in national or the provincial assembly.
Badam Zari, candidate for NA-44 Bajaur, Nusrat Begum, candidate for NA-34 Lower Dir, and Musarrat Shaheen, candidate for NA-24 Dera Ismail Khan, made headlines after they announced to contest the May 11 general elections.
Local and international media covered the stories of the three women but none could poll even 200 votes. But their participation was a sign of bravery and motivated a large number of voters to come out of homes on the election day despite serious threats from the militants.
Badam Zari was the first ever woman to have filed nomination paper for general elections from Pakistan’s tribal areas while Nusrat Begum had filed papers from an area where women even never cast votes. Musarrat Shaheen, once a popular Pashto actress.
All the three women lost election with huge margins. Musarrat Shaheen bagged 99 votes only, Badam Zari got 142 while Nusrat Begum could get 187 votes. The three women, however, made their presence felt throughout their election campaign despite knowing they couldn’t defeat influential candidates.
Among the 13 women candidates for National Assembly from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Fata, the Awami National Party’s candidate for NA-14 Kohat, Khurshid Begum, bagged 7211 votes,
Dr Shaheen Zamir, candidate for NA-21 Mansehra-cum-Torghar could get 814 votes while Asma Mahmood got 587 votes for NA-32 Chitral. Around two dozen women candidates also contested for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly but only two of them could get over 1000 votes. Syeda Batool Nasir of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz got the highest number of votes among the woman candidates for any seat in the KP Assembly.
She bagged 1234 votes. Naeema Nisar of Qaumi Watan Party remained second on the list of woman candidates for any Provincial Assembly seat by bagging 1042 votes from PK-44 Abbottabad. In Hazara division Noreen Kazmi of MQM got 107 votes for PK-45 Abbottabad. Three female candidates were in the run for PK-50 Abbottabad. Faiza Rasheed got 532 votes, Bakhtawara Shah got 22 votes while Farhat Nawaz got 118 votes from the constituency.
In Mansehra, Sajida Tabassum got 304 votes while Syeda Gulnaz Shah got 51 votes for PK-53 while Arshida Bibi got 866 votes for PK-56. Internews
