Demographic dilemmas: First-time voters have diversified priorities

City’s youth are not a unified block, with support for a range of candidates visible.

ISLAMABAD:

They are young, they have the right to vote and they are willing to use it.

More than 100,000 Islamabad residents under the age of 26 are eligible to cast their votes for the capital’s two National Assembly constituencies. Most of them will be voting for the first time.

According to age-wise voter statistics available on the ECP’s website, 19.4 per cent of Islamabad’s total registered voters are between 18 and 25 — almost one voter out of every five. Nationwide, around 16.9 million voters under 26 are eligible to vote on May 11, while around one-thirds of all Islamabad voters are under 30, according to the ECP.

The potential for the youth to affect the outcome of the 2013 general elections, however, is evident in Islamabad, as young voters appear to be relishing their first encounter with the ballot box.

“It is every citizen’s responsibility to vote,” said 20-year-old Abdul Samad, an electrical engineering student at the Federal Urdu University and resident of Sector F-10. “I’m definitely not going to shy away from my responsibility.”

Samad will be using his first-ever vote to support Jamaat-e Islami (JI) candidate Mian Aslam in NA-48. His decision, he says, is based on Aslam’s support and accessibility to his constituents, even when he was not in power.

Two sectors to the south-east, Waqarur Rehman, 21, a software engineering student, is supporting veteran politician Javed Hashmi, who is the PTI’s candidate for the same seat as Aslam.

“Given our history of politics, we need to give a new party the chance,” Rehman explained as the rationale behind his support for PTI.

This seemingly well-informed 18 to 25 age group of voters is second only to the city’s 31 to 40 voter bracket, which makes up for around 22 per cent of Islamabad’s total votes.

The ECP last updated the age-wise voter list in February. Since then, the ECP has revised the total number of voters in Islamabad from 609,517 to 629,233 — an increase of 19,716 votes. An ECP official told The Express Tribune that the updated age-wise breakdown would be published in “a few days”.

Somewhat surprisingly, young women make up only 40.7 per cent of Islamabad’s under-26 voters.

“I am going to vote because this is the first time I have had the chance to be a part of the electoral process and it will be five years before I get another chance,” Rehma Hyder, 22, said.

Hyder, a graduate student, said she has settled upon PTI in her constituency — NA-48 — because the other parties have fielded previously elected candidates who never delivered on their promises.

While the PTI seems to have captivated many young urban citizens, youth support is far more fragmented in rural areas.

On Wednesday, when Tariq Fazal Chaudhry, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) candidate seeking reelection from NA-49, took out a rally from Koral Chowk to Chatta Bakhtawar, several young men on motorcycles enthusiastically cleared the way for his motorcade.

NA-49 is a predominantly rural constituency, in contrast to the more urban NA-48.

Chaudhry, who is locked in a four-way battle with Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) candidate Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar, PTI’s Ilyas Meherban and JI’s Farooq Zubair Khan, can do with the support of youngsters such as 18-year-old Ashfaq Hussain.

“I’ll vote for Chaudhry because he has promised to get roads constructed in our area,” said Hussain, a matric student from Rawat.

The PPP, which was in power during the past years, is not absent from the youth mix either.

“I and one of my uncles are the only ones supporting PPP in our family, which supports PML-N based on clan ties,” said Raheel Ahmed Awan, 23, whose vote is registered in NA-49. “I’ve made this decision dispassionately based on Khokhar’s personality and his ideas for our constituency.”

Out of the dozens of youngsters who spoke to The Express Tribune, only a few said they were not going to vote at all.

“This vote is a national trust, we should not waste at any cost,” said Awan. “Even if there is no worthy candidate, we should still vote.”

Published in The Express Tribune, April 28^th, 2013.