PESHAWAR, Aug 23: Politicians should educate voters on issues which needed to be addressed if voters were not aware about some matters, said Ms Roselyn O’Connell, president of the US National Women’s Political Caucus.

Ms O’Connell said that if a large number of voters were illiterate as was the case in Pakistan where voters were not aware of specific issues, candidates should identify issues and educate voters about it.

Speaking at a one-day workshop on ‘Campaign Platform Building’ organised by the US consulate here at Lincoln’s Corner in Peshawar University, Ms O’Connell said that a candidate should be “very familiar with the area and people he or she is going to represent”. A candidate should “attend community functions, businesss and recreational meetings and ask the community about their goals, for the place they live and work”. There should be polling on “issues and focus on groups, which is the first basic step in developing campaign platform”.

She said time, money, people and talent were basic tools for election campaign. A campaign plan, she said, should consist of an analysis of district, demographic profile and vote history. The candidate should also analyse the impact of other political issues and what the media was writing about a certain political candidate.

Ms O’Connell said the campaign strategy should determine voters “you need to win, the reason they will vote for you, the unifying message to address them and tactics and timeline to implement the strategy”.

Ms O’Connell said that a contesting candidate should create “a clear difference between him/her and the opponent, divide the voters on ideological lines”, a strategy that could be party-based, “become the champion of a single issue and cause and unify the voters on one issue”. An electoral candidate should know his own and his opponent’s weaknesses, strengths, political environment, issues and media analysis, she said. The candidate should give voters a key reason to vote for him and deny the vote for his opponent.

The campaign strategy should be such that it should be in contrast to your opponent’s strategy and your message should be more powerful. After creating a unifying theme, campaign tactics should be applied in organisation, scheduling, grass-root organisational programmes, communication and finance. This includes campaign personnel, volunteer recruitment, budget management, public relations, community relations, developing lists of voters, door to door walk program, bloggers, and using media for your election campaign.

Building relations with media “is one very important campaign tactics”, Ms O’Connell said. She said the campaign plan should be written down to assign tasks and deadlines to the groups. “The real work starts when you start implementing your campaign plan”, she said.