Mayor of Colombo
Hafiz Mohammad Idrees

Sri Lanka is an important and interesting country of our region, having a variety of people from different religions and origins. Despite having a small population (20.5 mill), the country has the highest per capita income of $3250, more than that of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Seventy per cent of population practice Budhism while Hindus, Christians and Muslims comprise 15 per cent, 8 per cent and 7 per cent respectively.

Recently, Sri Lankan capital Colombo made the headlines when a poor Muslim rickshaw driver was elected its mayor beating strong candidate of the ruling party. Awais Mohammad Imtiaz, 23, has a unique distinction of being the youngest and poorest mayor of Colombo's history and he overcame strong pressures and incentives from the ruling party to withdraw from the contest.

Hailing from a very poor and humble family, Awais got elected merely due to his determination. His election has been termed as the most “unexpected and unique” in country's history since he belonged to the smallest religious minority and is practically resourceless to contest such a high profile election.

Orphaned in his childhood, Awais managed education until ninth grade and then forced to take the hard course of earning livelihood for his family comprising a mother and a sister. He remembered how his mother sold fried potatoes and fish to earn livelihood for the family in his childhood. Until his elections as mayor, Awais used to earn his living as a rickshaw driver. In the elections, he was fully backed by other opposition parties like United Naitonal Party and other social groups for his honesty, uprightness and steadfastness. To prevent him from harassment, Awais was kept in hiding by a leader of opposition's party until majority of the councilors voted in his favor in a historic decision on June 30.

Awais has a wife and a two year old daughter. His wife works as a housemaid in a foreign country for the sake of better future for their daughter. She returns to the country once a year to spend some time with husband and daughter.

After his elections as Lord Mayor of Colombo, Awais is quite busy with the world media and his newfound popularity. He meets with guests and mediamen in his usual simple clothes. Despite knowing English language he prefers to speak in his mother tongue Sinhali to explain his future plans for the improvement of civic conditions for the 2.7 million residents of Colombo.

Being a poor himself, he says that he better knows the poverty and the problems it brings for the people. He has vowed to make Colombo a model city in South Asia with clean roads, safe neighborhoods and beautiful parks and public places. He wants to turn the city into a tourists' hub.

He has also vowed to make all affairs of the city administration transparent and root out corruption which has ruled the city affairs in the past. He has also announced to investigate the corruption cases of previous administrations afresh so as to bring all the culprits to book.

Awais has made it clear to interviewers that he is neither racist nor practices sectarianism. He likes to serve all the residents indiscriminately since he considers himself a representative of the whole city. He said he has no discrimination for people with respect to being Sinhalese, Tamil, Hindu or Muslim. However, being a Muslim who knows poverty from the deep, he is fully aware of the problems of the Muslim community whose majority is very poor.

Awais did not wait for getting adjusted in his new position and launched the cleanliness drive in the city from the second day of his election. For his critics, he has relived some of the greatest mayors in the world history. I reckon him among Tayib Ordugan, (Turkish prime minister and former mayor of Istanbul), Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (Iranian President and former mayor of Tehran) and former mayor of Karachi Naimatullah Khan and Abdus Sattar Afghani since he is repeating the history those three great mayors had made in their respective cities. All the three afore mentioned Muslim personalities remained mayors of big cities of Muslim countries but Awais has an edge over them as he has been elected mayor of a city where Muslims are a small minority.These three personalities were from not so affluent background but represented middle or upper middle classes yet they had a sound educational career. But Awais's educational and social background is in sharp contrast to them as he had lived most of his life close to poverty line.

The day Awais shifted into the official residence of Lord Mayor of Colombo, he said he really did not need such a large residence for himself and his family but had to move into the official residence to meet the requirements of protocol and entertaining visitors. He admitted he does face some security problems but reaffirmed that he never feared anyone but Allah Almighty.

I wonder if Pakistani nation can trust Awais-like candidates in the hovering national elections so that the world could know that people of Pakistan, fully aware about their needs, have elected real representatives and did not fall in the trap of feudal lords who had been using them as tool of their election success and in the end of the day fail to deliver anything in tangible form.

The writer is naib ameer of Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan.
e-mail: amir@ji.org.pk