• 21-member body formed to reorganise PTI
• Special panel to decide award of tickets
• Fawad asks opposition for alternative to finance bill

ISLAMABAD: Just a few days after the shocking defeat of the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) in the local government elections in its stronghold of Khy­ber Pakhtunkhwa, Prime Minister Imran Khan on Friday dissolved the party’s organisational structure across the country.

During a meeting with senior PTI leaders, Prime Minister Khan constituted a 21-member committee to form a new structure of the party organisations.

“The prime minister dissolved Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s all organisations from Centre to tehsil level across the country after consultation with the senior leadership of the party,” announced Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry at a press conference.

He said all the office-bearers of the PTI’s organisational setup had been removed from their posts.

The minister said the meeting had decided that a special committee would be formed to look into the matter of giving tickets to relatives of PTI leaders and in future such cases would not be decided at the local level, rather they would be sent to the committee for a final decision.

Mr Chaudhry said KP Chief Minister Mahmood Khan had been given responsibility for the second phase of local bodies elections in KP and a ticketing mechanism for the elections would be set up, with the approval of the prime minister.

The decision on tickets for local government elections in Punjab would come to a committee comprising PTI’s senior members, he said, adding that the committee would decide the candidates at the central level so that no issues such as resentment come up at the local level.

The minister said the meeting discussed KP’s LG elections and the general situation of the country. He said: “A 21-member constitutional committee comprising the national PTI leadership had been formed which was working on the new constitution of the party.”

The committee comprises Pervez Khattak, Mahmood Khan, Murad Saeed, Asad Qaiser, Ali Amin Gandapur from KP, and Fawad Chaudhry, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Hammad Azhar, Khusro Bakhtiar, Chaudhry Mohammad Sarwar, Saifullah Niazee, Amir Kayani and Sardar Usman Buzdar from Punjab.

Mir Jan Mohammad Jamali and Qasim Suri would represent Balochistan while Imran Ismail and Ali Zaidi from Sindh and Asad Umar from the federal capital were part of the committee.

Mr Chaudhry said after the approval of the committee comprising senior members, new organizations of the PTI would be constituted.

A day after the first phase of LG polls in the KP in which Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) clinched top slots, Prime Minister Khan had expressed displeasure and grilled KP Chief Minister Mehmood Khan on the party’s defeat.

Mr Khan had blamed selection of wrong candidates for the defeat in the first phase of the local government elections in KP province. “Selection of wrong candidate, was a major cause, however, in the second phase of LG polls, PTI would bounce back with strength,” he had announced. He also had claimed that he would himself monitor all LG polls to be held in the country in future.

Mr Chaudhry told the presser that the PTI was still the largest political party in Pakistan whereas Mr Khan was the leader of the federation and his vote bank was present everywhere from Gwadar to Khyber and from Karachi to Lahore. “No party other than the PTI is capable of fielding candidates for 1,100 to 1,200 seats of the national and provincial assemblies in the general elections. The PPP is now the party of Sindh whereas the PML-N is confined to Punjab only,” he added.

“As members of PTI, we have to fulfill the responsibilities of the federation diligently considering them as national responsibilities,” he maintained.

If PTI’s politics was affected, it would affect the politics of Pakistan badly, he believed.

The minister told the media that Prime Minister Khan had expressed dissatisfaction over the PTI performance in the first phase of local body elections in the KP.

He said there was no concept of family politics in his party as Mr Khan never allowed personal relationships to dominate in his political career. “If the culture of PPP and PML-N comes to the PTI, there will be no difference between them and us,” he remarked.

The minister said Mr Khan expressed displeasure over the distribution of party tickets against which many complaints had been received. The way the PTI should have played its role as a major party was not witnessed in the KP’s local body elections, he added.

‘Not a personal bill of PTI’

Replying to a question, Mr Chaudhry said the finance bill was “not a personal bill of the PTI” and if the opposition did not want to go to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme, they should come up with an alternative solution.

He reminded that billions of dollars had been borrowed by the past regimes of the PPP and PML-N which had to be paid back by the present government. “If they have any alternative proposal or agenda, they should bring it in the parliament,” the minister suggested to the opposition parties.

Published in Dawn, December 25th, 2021