KARACHI: There are no hoardings or an election symbol to pronounce the intra-party elections of the Awami National Party this time around in Ittehad Town. The straight road from Naval Colony till Abu Huraira Madressah in Daud Goth does not bear a single ANP flag though there used to be one hanging from every street light on this road until a couple of years back.

Outwardly an industrial area, Ittehad Town is the main junction of various splinter groups of the Taliban who openly took responsibility after killing various ANP leaders before and during the last year general elections. One of the major blows came two months before the elections when a vice president of the ANP was shot dead inside a mosque in the area.

The appointment of candidates from district west, Shamroz Khan as president and Mahmood Pakhtoon Yaar as general secretary, was quietly accepted by other ANP members as no one wanted to volunteer for the post.

In contrast, the intra-party election in district south was quite a media fare a few days back. A proper polling took place and election booths were set up while the winning candidate, Abdul Qayyum Salarzai, openly spoke about his plans.

Being the centre of a progressive movement in their respective areas previously, the ANP is now a mere shadow of its previous self though the party is picking itself — slowly but surely.

Seated in a semi-circle in an open veranda of their ward office in Ittehad Town, the party members at district west spoke about ANP’s past and what they learned while reaching the present. Former general secretary, Niaz Syed Wahid, a 60-year-old soft spoken man, began his interview from last year’s general elections. “There was an obvious threat as a result of which our men were killed. But the party decided to look within, rather than without, to find out the reasons for its subsequent failure in the elections,” he said in a matter of fact manner.

Being an important ally of the Pakistan Peoples Party in the last tenure, the ANP lost many of its key members and electoral candidates in attacks by militants before the elections. Because unlike the PPP’s mixed response on terrorism, the ANP openly vented out against rising militancy in the country.

After the party’s failure in general elections, Pakhtunkhwa organising committee chairman Bashir Ahmed Matta constituted a committee to understand the reasons behind the party’s downfall. On the recommendations of a report made by the same committee, the entire body of the party was dissolved in August 2013.

Sindh Organising Committee chairman Altaf Khan Advocate said: “Candidacy was given to people who had no clue about the party’s ideology. We have decided not to bring them forward anymore as we want to promote a non-violent message of our leader Bacha Khan (Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan).”

Under the new order, he explained, party members would be elected at union council level who would then select members at district level from where the selection of members at provincial level would take place and then the central. “If a candidate wants to withdraw from contesting an election he may do so and the committee will decide on another member. But otherwise, we’ll go for elections, where they’ll have to convince us they are worthy of the post,” said Mr Wahid.

Every four years an intra-party election takes place in all four provinces. The party membership in Ittehad Town, which one can get after paying Rs20, went downhill from last year. “We had around 3,200 members previously. This year we have managed to influence only a mere 900 members from district west,” added the party’s former secretary general while showing the red and white party card.

“We faced constant risk. We couldn’t go out and speak to our people properly,” Mr Wahid said, “We still can’t. There are forces out to attack us but what many people don’t know is that we are struggling since partition. This (situation) is not unusual for us.”

Explaining, Altaf Khan said the situation had not changed for them yet. “We still face the same threats. As a result of it, we are focused on bringing forth candidates from within the public.” From openly denouncing terrorism in their respective areas — whether in Karachi or Khyber Pakhtunkhwa — ANP members now pick and choose their words around the subject.

“Our policy is still the same,” said Shamroz Khan, president of the newly elected body in Ittehad Town. “We are still against terrorism and imposition of a certain brand of Islam. But we are going to go about these issues in as peaceful a manner as possible. We have realised the importance of being tactful.”