• Friday, March 29, 2024

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Khan’s drastic move after K-P poll debacle upsets PTI workers

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf supporters during a protest in Karachi. (Photo by RIZWAN TABASSUM/AFP via Getty Images)

By: ShubhamGhosh

JUST a few days after Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan dissolved the organisational structure of his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) in the wake of the party’s poor show in local government elections in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, workers of the party have expressed their dissatisfaction.

They are particularly upset over the appointment of the country’s federal ministers as new officials of the party who they blame for the recent poll debacle, Pakistani daily Dawn reported.

A minister of Khan’s government said the PTI came up with a new structure to re-organise and reactivate the party so that active contacts could be established with the workers and voters at grassroots level. He also said the party’s model has been transformed.

Khan, who is the chairman of the PTI, has appointed planning, development and special initiatives minister Asad Umar as the party’s central secretary general and former federal minister Amir Mahmood Kiyani as the additional secretary general.

He also made education minister Shafqat Mahmood as the party president of the Punjab province which will also go to polls soon, industries and production minister Khusro Bakhtiar as the president of south Punjab, defence minister Pervaiz Khattak as the president of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, maritime affairs minister Ali Zaidi as the president of Sindh and national assembly speaker Qasim Suri as the president of Balochistan.

However, the party’s disgruntled leaders were far from happy with the appointments. They said those who were at fault should have been punished while in reality, everyone has been put in the dock.

“We are unable to understand the wisdom behind dissolving party organisations across the country by a high-powered core committee headed by party chairman Imran Khan,” a disappointed party leader in Punjab told Dawn.

Senior PTI leaders in Punjab expressed concerns that the PTI could face major challenges ahead of the upcoming local government elections and eventually the general elections in 2023 and dissolving functional systems would not make things easier for the ruling party.

Pakistan Weekly

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