PESHAWAR: The Awami National Party and Pakistan People’s Party are banking heavily on their grassroots workers in several Khyber Pakhtunkhwa areas to run electioneering amidst risks to their candidates, according to political circles.

After the bombing attacks on ANP candidates in Bannu, Peshawar, and Charsadda, it has concentrated its electioneering heavily on meeting voters in door-to-door campaigns which are being run by its grassroots workers in all Khyber Pakhtunkhwa districts.

“We are worried about our candidates’ security because there are forces bent upon postponing the elections and we don’t want this to happen,” said Bushra Gohar, ANP’s former member of the National Assembly.

She said the party had a strategy that the candidates were to be protected and the responsibility to conduct the electioneering had been assigned to the workers.

Mian Iftikhar, a senior ANP leader who is contesting from his native provincial assembly constituency from Pabbi, Nowshera district, told Dawn that his supporters were spearheading his electioneering, conducting a door-to-door campaign in various villages.

In Peshawar, according to political activists, ANP’s workers are conducting Haroon Bilour’s campaign at the ward level, approaching voters.

“It is safe and more fruitful as personally contacting voters on one-to-one basis is helping us to listen to their grievances and extract assurances from them to vote for PPP, which matters a lot,” said Sadeeq Chairman, a Peshawar city PPP activist.

He said the PPP could not hold public meetings or take out processions because of threats from militants. A few days ago, miscreants hurled a hand grenade on the residence of Zulfiqar Afghani, PPP’s candidate for Peshawar’s national assembly constituency NA-1, causing damage to the property.

“We have constituted teams of two to four workers to conduct Mr Afghani’s door-to-door campaign at the Muhallah level in Peshawar,” said Mr. Sadeeq, adding the strategy was paying dividends.

He said ANP had also adopted a similar strategy as its workers had also been contacting at the Mohallah level in Peshawar city.

“The grassroots party workers’ significance has redoubled in this extraordinary situation,” said the PPP activist.

Another PPP worker from Namakmandi, Peshawar, Malick Naveed, drew a dismal picture of the situation. “ANP’s worker is terrified, PPP’s worker is reluctant for having been ignored for the last five years,” said Mr. Naveed, adding “this has left the field wide open for Jamaat-i-Islami’s Shabbir Ahmed Khan.”

Sadeeq Chairman said the situation had come as a blessing in disguise for the PPP candidates. “We are connecting with our voters on personal level, convincing them that our candidate was not elected from their constituency last time as a result of which we were constrained to come up to their expectations in future,” said the PPP man.

Dr Ijaz Khan Khattak, a senior professor at the University of Peshawar’s international relations department, when contacted, said that the grassroots workers had become all the more vital for ANP and PPP under the given circumstances when their candidates and leaders were on Taliban’s target.

“Theoretically, party workers hold the central significance in any party as it is the party workers who manage, organise, and run party affairs,” said the academician, adding “the more active workers a party has, greater are the chances of its success.”

PPP’s Sadeeq said that the workers’ involvement in conducting the door-to-door campaign had been helping them to win back the allegiance of disgruntled party workers who got dissuaded because of party leadership’s failure to remain in touch with the grassroots workers.

“The grassroots and loyal workers are far more important for the polling day than running the show in the run-up to the elections day,” said Mr. Sadeeq.

His views were echoed from the academician Dr Ijaz Khattak’s comments, highlighting the significance of experienced workers on the polling day.

“The polling day neither belongs to political parties’ strategists nor manifesto formulators or candidates,” said the political scientist. “The day belongs to the experienced workers who are connected with the voters and know how to bring them out of their homes to cast their votes.”

However, ANP’s former parliamentarian Bushra Gohar said the workers’ overwhelming involvement in electioneering could not be as effective as the candidates leading their campaigns personally.

“This (workers running the campaign) is an alternative, but naturally this does not serve as the best option for the contestants,” said Ms Gohar.

She said her party’s candidates could not go with their supporters on the campaign trail while the ‘pro-jihadi’ candidates were freely conducting their campaigns.

Shaukat Ali Yousufzai, Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s candidate for Peshawar’s provincial assembly constituency PK-2, when contacted during his mass contact campaign at Kachi Mohallah, Peshawar, said that they were holding public meetings and processions apart from conducting door-to-door canvassing to solicit for his party chief Imran Khan, who is running for NA-1, Peshawar-1.

“Imran is scheduled to address a public meeting in Peshawar on May 8 or May 9,” said Mr Yousafzai.