F.P. Report
LOWER DIR: Leading rights’ activist and winner of the US Department of State’s International Women of Courage Award in March, 2012, Ms Shad Begum has expressed pleasure and satisfaction on women voters’ mobilization in the most conservative societies like Dir, Bunir, Shangla, Kohistan and newly merged tribal districts and termed it a way forward for women’ empowerment and development.
Talking to The Frontier Post at Talash during her brief visit to the district here on Wednesday, Ms Shad also appreciated the election commission of Pakistan role to ensure women participation in election and discourage their disenfranchisement.
Shad Begum is the founder and an executive director of the Association for Behaviour and Knowledge Transformation (ABKT), an organization working for the economic and political empowerment of the marginalized segments of society in backward areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. She has so far won several national and international awards in recognition for her social and humanitarian services.
She said that political parties had realized the importance of women, who constitute more than 50 per cent of the whole population. She said that due to close contests all the political parties wanted to bring more and more women to polling stations, which was a good omen.
She said the ECP had taken prompt and timely notices of the decree issued by religious clerics in Kohistan to declare women canvassing as un-Islamic. She said the ECP rejected the controversial decree about banning women participation in elections and warned to nullify the whole process if women were barred from taking part in electioneering.
Ms Shad said the ECP had formed a gender desk that would actively observe and monitor various activities regarding women participation from Feb 1 to 8 throughout the country. She said that women activists like her, had been in close liaison with the ECP’s gender desk. She said that now it was impossible to bar women from taking part in politics. She asked the political parties to include women activists in their policy making bodies so that women could be represented with a true spirit.
“I was pleased to see this time that all major political parties including PPP, PTI, JI, JUI-F, ANP and PML-N are not only mobilizing their women voters in Dir but also imparting trainings to them how to cast votes and work as polling agents”, Shad Begum said, adding that there seemed a high acceptance for women voters and female polls’ candidates.
Giving the example of Dr Saveera Parkash, a PPP candidate from Bunir district belonging to a Hindu religion, she said that she had been receiving an overwhelming reception and regards not only from women but also from men in her electioneering campaign. She said that it was a sign of satisfaction for her that several women candidates in Dir, Kohistan, Bunir and other parts of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa were in the running. Ms Shad said that once there was a time when no one could even think about women participation in elections as voters or to contest elections but now the tradition had changed and women leaders within their cultural norms were leading in society.
About women mobilization in Lower and Upper Dir, she said that several political parties including JI, ANP, PTI and PPP had formed special teams of women leaders which had been motivating and mobilizing women voters in both the districts. “I have information that these parties have been training women activists to work as polling agents”, she said, adding that now women from parts of the province were inviting them to come and train women voters for rightly exercising their right to vote.
