Among a multitude of contenders, close fight likely between PPP and ANP candidates.
PESHAWAR:
With some new forces on the political turf including the emergence of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI), the NA-2 Peshawar II, known as the constituency of Arbabs, is expected to yield an interesting competition in the May 11 election.
The constituency is also known as the only one in the country from where a couple returned to the lower chamber of parliament in the 2008 election: Arbab Alamgir Khalil was elected on a general seat while his wife Asma Alamgir was elected on a reserved seat, respectively.
Alamgir remained the federal minister of communications and Asma Alamgir was the special adviser to prime minister on state and frontier regions.
The JUI-F, unexpectedly, has allotted a ticket to a candidate who has never actively participated in politics before: Maulana Saeed Jan, who is the Muhtamim (administrator) of Darul Uloom Regi.
Jan might pocket some votes of the religiously inclined, but he may not get enough votes in the central (urban) areas to push him to the victory stand as most of the residents here are businessmen. Though many other parties have fielded their candidates, most of them are novices and hardly a threat to stalwarts.
The two main rivals
The real contest, as political analysts predict, will occur between Arbab Alamgir, the PPP candidate, and Arbab Najeebullah Khalil, the ANP contender.
“The real competition will be between these two men as other poll aspirants do not have much popularity in the constituency,” said political activist Akhtar Khan. He added that if PTI had allotted a ticket to former squash great Qamar Zaman, it would have been a big hurdle for the two stalwarts of ANP and PPP.
Alamgir, the ex-federal minister, might have done some development work in his village Tehkal, but other parts of his poll constituency largely went neglected. Now he has a challenge on his hand: how to garner support from these areas of the electorate.
Najeebullah’s party, ANP, was unable to facilitate maintaining peace in the region, and this goes against him. However this time around, he is in a position to give a tough fight to his rival Alamgir. Najeebullah’s campaign will hit Alamgir where it hurts the most, by highlighting the fact that Alamgir predominantly ignored parts of the constituency at the expense of residents.
Najeebullah will also gain the edge by harping on the ANP sacrifices in the shape of martyred party workers across the region in the wake of its fight for peace that might fetch him more sympathy votes.
Being the son of the illustrious politician Arbab Jehangir Khan who served as the chief minister of the province from 1985 to 1988, gives Alamgir an advantage.
Previous performances
In the 2008 elections Alamgir had defeated Khalil by a big margin. In the 2002 elections, Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) candidate Maulana Rehmatullah was the winner from the constituency by getting 37, 000 votes. His rival Alamgir, at that time, could get 15,000 votes only, while Najeebullah did not contest the elections.
The PPP’s former federal minister Khan Bahadur Khan won from this constituency in 1988 while former chief minister (the late) Arbab Muhammad Jehangir Khan was successful in 1990, 1993 and 1997.
The late Arbab Jehangir contested elections from this constituency from the platform of two different political parties: from ANP in 1990 and from PPP in 1997.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 24th, 2013.
COMMENTS (13)
Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.
For more information, please see our Comments FAQ
The country where no one can get insaaf, where there is no concept of saza o jaza how it is posble to prosper and compete the world's race. All the PPP and ANP party position holders have been tried and proved to be the most corrupt polititians of the world. Zardari who was a famous culprit and got a name of mr. ten percent and shortly turned into mr. hundred percent became a president of this country. Shame for the ppl of pakistan who have never learned lesson. I just pray to almighty ALLAH to destroy all those candidates who want to eat n destroy ths country n give power to PTI who at the moment is showing sincerity and have capability and spirit to deliver. plz put your hands on ur hearts and lets try the last turn of this jamhuri khail. If this party couldnt prove them....then Allah may give us some one from the sky or earth who becomes Mahateer Muhammad of recent time who turned malaysia into a wonderful country like paradise. Dont we deserve the leader like this.....???????
I am a voter of NA-2 and let me tell you PTI have bright prospects in this constituency. In general, fastest change occurs in pashtun areas because they vote independently and are not under influence of big landlords or pirs as is the case in parts of sindh, baclochistan and south punjab.
i live in NA 2. and my vote goes for ANP
PPP will win from NA-2
ET reporter has written this report sitting in his office. The reality is totally different. Please advise your report to survey the site before reporting.
Yellow journalism at its best. Carry on. It wont' make any difference. I just hope someone show this article to ET on May 12.
This analysis is far from ground reality of Peshawar.
I think, your (newspaper) analysis are very biased, I have seen other analysis for different constituencies. What I got is that you want to show that there is no PTI, vote only for the PPP, PML (N), ANP. You will see that Imran Khan and PTI will cleasn sweep Peshawar Inshallah.
Baised ET as usual :( I live in NA2 and I have been asking people around,be it taxi drivers,university chachas,teachers even some of the madrasa students,they all are going to vote PTI,They don't even care about the candidate's name,all the say is we are going to try IK
Its TIME to raise with PML-N. The obvious choice. Vote for Pakistan.
Arbab Alamgir has the reputation of being a clean politician with no accusations of any corruption on him and his family..a clear favourite....
Wow ET! Bias of the highest order! If we were to go by any of your reports, it would seem like PTI probably won't win a single seat.