New rules mean at least 5% of each party’s candidates for Wednesday’s polls must be women – but most are allocated seats they are unlikely to win

At a tiny gathering in the narrow streets of the eastern city of Lahore, Saira Bano, clad in a burqa, sits quietly among bearded men, who chant “long live Hafiz Saeed”.



Saeed leads the Jamaat-ud-Dawa militant group accused of being behind the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, which killed 166 people. He carries a $10m (£7.6m) bounty on his head.

Bano is contesting Wednesday’s election in Pakistan for the Allah O Akbar Tehreek (AAT) party, a new political wing with links to Jamaat-ud-Dawa and the Milli Muslim League, which is on the UN’s list of banned organisations.

Saeed may not be standing for office in Lahore, but his face is on all the Allah O Akbar posters and he remains an inspiration for his followers.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Hafiz Saaed, centre, head of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, at a campaign meeting in Islamabad last Saturday. Photograph: Aamir Qureshi/AFP/Getty Images

“Hafiz Saeed is a good man who helps Muslims around the world, like the Rohingyas. This is all propaganda against Hafiz Saeed, generated by [former prime minister] Nawaz Sharif,” says Bano.

Saeed has in the past campaigned against women working, let alone standing for election. But Bano is one of 10 female candidates contesting seats on the Allah O Akbar ticket. The move is not the result of enlightened views, but because new election rules stipulate that at least 5% of a party’s candidates must be women. This means a record 558 women will be standing for national and provincial parliament seats this week.

However, most political parties, especially religious ones, are fielding their female candidates in seats they are sure to lose. Bano, who is related to the wife of Sharif, jailed earlier this month for corruption, knows winning is a long shot. But she believes Saeed and his party will consult women like her on policy matters.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Saira Bano campaigning in Lahore. Photograph: Mohsin Raza/Reuters

At least Bano is being encouraged to campaign. In Peshawar, capital of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in the country’s north-west, where women are seldom seen in public areas, Tehreek Labbaik Ya Rasool Allah, another hardline Islamist party, is fielding a female candidate for the national assembly yet none of its leaders have ever met her.

Labbaik was formed last year by a fiery cleric and promises to enforce stricter laws against blasphemy. The party’s participation in the elections follows a decision by Pakistan’s army to “mainstream” religious extremists.

Pakistan elections: who is standing and what is at stake? Read more

In Peshawar no one seems to know “Ms Yasmeen”, the candidate without a last name and without a face – the space is left blank on campaign posters. When asked about her whereabouts, a male candidate from the party also contesting a seat for Peshawar holds a finger to his lips and says in a hushed voice: “She is a silent candidate. We gave her name to fulfil the requirements of the election commission, but she will not campaign. She is a pious lady and never steps out of her house or talks to journalists.”

It is not just the extremist Islamist parties that are fielding female candidates in seats they cannot win. Mainstream political parties, like Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-N, are doing the same.

Sobia Shahid is standing for the party in Lower Dir, a rural area, also in the north-west, where all the political parties had previously made a written agreement not to allow women to vote. “Despite the fact that men get women to do all their work at home, during elections they don’t find them capable to vote and ban them from doing so,” says Shahid. “Someone has to stand against this injustice.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bismillah Noor, left, a social worker and district council member, tells women in Mohri Pur village, 60km from the Punjabi city of Multan, to use their vote.

She says that by tradition women don’t go to funerals – which local politicians are expected to attend – and are not present at tribal councils, making it harder to reach voters. But apart from some sexist statements by her male opponents, she says that male voters have been receptive.

“Surprisingly I have never been discouraged by male voters because they are so happy to see their representative and are eager to share their problems, in the hope that we can resolve them.”



Women don’t come to political rallies, so Shahid is running a door-to-door campaign. She complains that most women do not have an official identity card, which means they cannot cast a vote.

Asma Alamgir Khan, from a well-established political family in Peshawar, is able to spend big money on her campaign for the Pakistan People’s party, led by Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, son of the assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. She is seen as one of the few female candidates who has a chance of winning.

“The new law is a step forward for women. We are now in the political fray and at least the tradition of silence has been broken,” says Khan, standing among a crowd of men.