Nawabzada Amber Shahzada, an independent candidate contesting a the National Assembly, prepares before hitting the streets in his election campaign in Lahore.Photo: AFP
Shahzada's moustache is surmounted by sunglasses and a garnet headdress, while a thin red scarf adorns the neck of a candidate seeking to be the “king of politics”.
But Shahzada is a lonely king at the head of a party of which he is the only member, who in the last 32 years has competed in 41 elections, and never won one.
In 1990 his party was refused registration when he vowed to provide people with residential plots on the moon.
In 2013 he won just seven votes.
But he says it's all satire.
“Politicians are making us fools, they are misleading the public, and I try to make people aware with my funny style,” he told AFP.
His slogan? “Need-based corruption”. If elected, Shahzada vows to be “semi-corrupt”.
That is opposed to the “full-corrupt” politicians currently in power, he says.
Mir Abdul Karim Nousherwani, the weather vane
Opportunism is his ideology. Since 1985, Abdul Karim Nousherwani of Balochistan has changed party seven times and been elected twice as an independent.
This time he will compete for the Balochistan Awami Party.
By aligning with the ruling parties that he gets development projects for his territory, he says.
“The moment he feels the power ship is sinking, he will be the first to jump out for another ship,” says another parliamentarian, on condition of anonymity.
Nousherwani, who first worked as a driver, was unable to run in the 2002 and 2008 elections because he did not graduate from school.
Ali Wazir, the indestructible
Hailing from militancy-wracked South Waziristan, Ali Wazir's losses in the country's long war with insurgents are horrifying.
Wazir has had 10 relatives killed by militants, who have also destroyed his home, orchards and petrol station since the military first took the fight to the Taliban more than a decade ago.
But he has never backed down.
As a rare vocal critic of both the Taliban and establishment, Wazir has risen to prominence for critisicising military to task over heavy-handedness against local civilians during the fight with insurgents.
“I am contesting elections at the demands of my people,” said Wazir in an online video. “I will struggle for their rights.”