He’s rich and, as he puts it, it’s his “burning desire” to see the American values of liberty, justice, the right to pursue happiness, liberty and the rule of law “transplanted” in Pakistan; the now Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf candidate from his native Mansehra, Azam Khan Swati has seen a meteoric rise in the country’s political horizons.

From the rather dubious distinction of being called the one-million-dollar-man for donating a fake one million dollar bill for flash flood victims in Dadar in 2001 — a charge he vehemently denies, blaming his political rivals for staging the drama — Mr Swati’s fortunes have swelled from being district nazim in 2002 to a senator with the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl support a year and a half later, with the highest number of votes from a Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal-dominated NWFP assembly in February 2003.

It was odd for an anti-American religious party to grant a ticket to a man whose burning desire it was to “transplant” American values into Pakistan. Whether it was his riches or his political ideals that impressed the wily Maulana Fazlur Rahman remains a mystery, but his association with the Maulana saw him re-elected as senator on a technocrat seat in 2006.

Came the PPP-led coalition government in 2008, and Mr Swati found himself the minister for science and technology, a portfolio he continued to hold till his fallout with the then minister for religious affairs, Hamid Saeed Kazmi, over an alleged Haj scam. The 57-year-old Mr Swati from Chajar in Oghi, Mansehra, became a whistle-blower against his cabinet colleague: both lost their jobs.

Seeing the winds shift, Mr Swati quit the JUI-F, resigned his Senate seat in December 2011, and announced that he was joining the PTI. Careful not to scoff at the party that had catapulted him into the political limelight, Mr Swati said he was quitting the Senate because in his view parliament had become redundant.

The JUI-F was not amused. One of its leaders hit back, accusing Mr Swati of having used the party for his own benefit. “He was the one who had said that he would like to be buried wrapped in a JUI-F flag. Where is he now?” demanded a JUI-F leader.

A Pakhtun by descent from the Swati clan, Mr Swati holds a doctor of jurisprudence degree from the South Texas College of Law in the US as well as several other degrees. He’s rich and he doesn’t hide it. He owns property here and abroad in the US and has shares in several companies. His fortunes run into millions of dollars, accounts of his wealth annexed with his nomination papers revealed.

To his credit, he has not been a miser — despite the million-dollar-bill joke. He donated Rs8 million to Hazara University and another Rs2m to the families of the Dadar victims.

Money makes the world go round, they say, and this is probably true of the way politics is conducted in Pakistan. Mr Swati, it seems, has learnt the tricks of the trade. His detractors not only accuse him of buying his way into the upper house of parliament but also of using his wealth to support some candidates in the PTI elections in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa — a charge his supporters vehemently deny.

He is the PTI’s candidate from Mansehra’s NA-20, pitted against two strong old-timers, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz’s Sardar Yusuf and the JUI-F’s Syed Qasim Shah. Sardar Yusuf, who quit the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid to join the PML-N, couldn’t contest the 2002 and 2008 elections because of the bar on non-graduates, letting his son making it twice to the lower house of parliament. Sardar Yusuf, thus, is likely to give Mr Swati a run for his money.