Roselyn O' Connel, the president of the Public Affairs Office of the US Embassy in Islamabad, has said that general masses must have awareness to cast their votes to qualified policymakers rather to 'Braderi' member or feudal lords.
She was addressing a workshop on 'Political Campaign Development' organised by 'Paiman Trust' here on Monday. Main objective to conduct the workshop was to train politicians of different political parties to run their political campaigns for the upcoming elections. General masses must be given political awareness at grass roots level so that their votes may bring appropriate members in the parliament and local governments, Roselyn said.
She said that people must cast votes to better policymakers so that masses may not suffer from wrong policies, as they would be capable of reforming trade, economy, education and health.
"A solid political platform must be developed to end the gender gap especially the difference between the proportion of women and men voting for the winning candidate".
Roselyn said that district analysis, demographic profile, vote history, candidate profiles, self-evaluation and opposition research analysis of the impact other than political races and issues and media analysis must be taken into account for successful completion of the political campaign.
"Campaign strategy must be research-oriented regarding basic assumptions about strength, weaknesses and political environment," she added.
She said that the people vote for a political representative who can fulfil their requirements including uplift and progress of their constituency and five general areas including organisation, scheduling, grass roots organisational programmes must be planned before the initiation of the political campaign.
"Planning to divide voters along philosophical lines and thrust or lack of it must be highlighted in the political campaign. Political candidates should visualise the political image presented and prevalent in his constituency and in the minds of people and the image of the opponent should also be kept in mind during the entire political campaign," she said.
Sardar Naseem from Pakistan Muslim League (Q), Nosheen Saeed from Awami National Party (ANP), Shahnaz Saleem, MPA Pakistan Muslim League (N), Syed Sarfraz Ali from National Reconstruction Bureau (NRB) and Brigadier Shafqat attended the political campaign development workshop.