Lower Dir’s Sumera Shams set to be youngest legislator

Lower Dir, a remote and conservative district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, is set to send a woman lawmaker, the youngest ever at 26, to the provincial legislature.Shamsul Qamar Khan, an Awami National Party (ANP) candidate in the 2008 elections, died of cardiac arrest on polling day.The local community thought his political legacy would die with him since he had no sons to continue his legacy.Little did they know that one of his daughters would prove them wrong.“My political career began shortly after my father died on February 18, 2008. He was contesting for Provincial and National Assembly seats (PF-95 and NA-34) on ANP tickets,” Qamar’s daughter Sumera Shams said.Though the ANP had been voted to power in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (then known as Northwest Frontier Province), Shams recalled how she had received a cold shoulder from the party and the community.In the years that followed, the family persevered.Her mother managed to head up two construction companies while her sister served as a district councillor in Lower Dir until 2018.A student at the time of her father’s death, Shams joined Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), assuming a role in the party’s female student wing in KP.Later, as head of the Insaf Students Federation women’s wing, Shams focused on issues like institutional sexual harassment.“It is not easy for a young girl to survive in a traditionally male-dominated society,” she explained.In the 2013 general polls, when local elders reached an agreement with political parties to bar women from casting their votes, Shams defied the PTI’s decision by becoming one of the few women to vote in the Dir region.“I waited until noon – (I was) indecisive. Later in the day, I gathered up the courage to proceed to the polling station and cast my vote,” she recalled. “Where last time it took minutes, this year I had to wait for three hours in line to vote as women came out in large numbers to vote.”The women voters’ turnout in the district was largely influenced by Section 9 of the Election Act 2017, which gives the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) the power to declare poll void if the commission finds violations including “implementation of an agreement restraining women from casting their votes”.After the PTI gained majority seats in the federal, Punjab and KP assemblies, Shams was picked to represent the district in the Provincial Assembly on a reserved seat for women.She said that Dir, an erstwhile stronghold of Jamaat-e-Islami, did not see any development work under the rule of the politico-religious party led by Sirjaul Haq.Asked why the right-wing party remained in coalition with the PTI until earlier this year, Shams said that the JI had failed to deliver in the district despite her party’s efforts.“It has been years since the PTI allotted funds for a medical college in Timergara, but due to JI’s corruption, the project could not be completed,” she claimed. “As local representatives, it was JI’s responsibility to bring development.”