Rooting for candidates, from Karachi to KP

Karachi
The hustle and bustle of the May 30 local government elections in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has managed to make its way to Karachi in its Pashtun neighbourhoods as well.
Many individuals and community-based organisations in Karachi have been supporting candidates contesting the local bodies polls in the Khyber Pakhtunkwa under the banner of various political parties and independently.
Some of them are sending election campaign materials including banners and posters to candidates they support in their hometowns in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa after having them printed in Karachi.
In fact, some of them have also been running fundraising campaigns for them. Some social and political figures in Karachi have calling up voters in their hometown to convince them to support the candidates they support.
Haji Khurshid Hazarvi, a political activist residing in Sherpao Colony, has printed 2,000 posters, 50 panaflexes and 5,000 stickers for his friend, Babu Bashir, who is contesting the elections for the seat of the general councillor in Abottabad district, and sent it through bus.
“By sending election campaign material worth of Rs30,000 to my preferred candidates in my village, I have shown my affiliation with my native town,” said Hazarvi, who has been living in Karachi for the last four decades and also contested the elections for the union council nazim seat. A significant population from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has been living in Karachi’s different areas. Researchers studying the trend of migration to Karachi say that these Pashtuns moved to the city in the early 1960s during Ayub Khan’s era.
However, lack of job opportunities, forced displacement because of military operations and the earthquake in 2005 have also caused large-scale migration from the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to Karachi.
Sartaj Khan, a Karachi-based social researcher, said before the National Database and Registration Authority’s computerisation of voters’ lists, the Pashtuns living in the city used to cast their votes in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
“In some districts, candidates used to arrange transportation for the voters in Karachi so that they could cast their votes in their native towns,” Khan added.
“But after the computerisation of voters’ lists, that trend ended and the Pashtuns in the city, who are mainly from the lower-middle class, prefer being registered as voters in Karachi instead of their hometowns.”
He said the trend of supporting candidates in their hometowns was more popular among the people belonging from districts of Buner, Dir, Mansehra, Battagaram, Mardan and Charsadda.
Interviews with the owners of printing presses in various Pashtun neighbourhoods suggest that the trend has decreased in last 10 years.
“In the beginning, printing houses in Karachi were making huge profits because of the orders placed by candidates from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa as there were a very few quality printing houses in Peshawar that time and candidates were asking their relatives in the city to send them election campaign material,” said an owner of a printing house in Quaidabad.
However, he added, hundreds of small and big printing machines have now been set up throughout Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Some individuals are also financially supporting candidates in their hometowns.
Jamshed Ali, a resident of Gizri and a trucker by profession, has sent a sum of Rs30,000 to two candidates in his native town of Jandol in Lower Dir.
“I used to visit my hometown for the elections. But in the last two elections, my engagement in business is not allowing me to go there,” he said.