DISTRICT PROFILE: Party aspirations vs voters´ aspirations in Mardan
(WorldNews Pakistan)

If investment in infrastructure development could win an election, the Awami National Party (ANP), which governed the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province from 2008 to 2013, would not have faced such a crushing defeat in the 2013 general elections. ANP´s then chief minister Ameer Haider Khan Hoti, who hails from Mardan, invested a large amount of money in his hometown and brought mega projects - universities, colleges, hospitals, roads and irrigation system - to the district. The heavy spending on infrastructure development also caused property prices in the area to shoot up. The development during the coalition government of the ANP and Pakistan Peoples Party changed the face of Mardan, the second...