Despite tall claims to ensure free, fair and transparent intra-party elections, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) has miserably failed to ban numerous small groups within the party, which are busy canvassing for their favourite candidates. Background interviews with some senior PTI leaders revealed that that there is little hope that the party would succeed in making things streamline as there are lots of issues which are yet to be resolved.
They said that the major issue. which the party failed to overcome, is ensuring merit, adding that PTI chairman himself had been accusing other political parties of accommodating turncoats but his party is also no exception. "There is clear contradiction what Imran Khan is saying and what he is doing to train his workers especially on such occasions when intra-party elections are hardly few months away," said a senior PTI leader who declined to be named.
According to him, those who are joining the PTI bandwagon, are getting more attention from the top party leadership, while those who were seen suffering around the container when PTI chairman was holding a sit-in, are just being treated as political novice. "This is no privy to us who are close to Imran and what roles the turncoats are being given...some have declared the portfolios for themselves if PTI comes into power, if this remained unnoticed by Imran, there is no hope that we could be different from other political parties, which we have labelled as statuesque," he lamented.
Another PTI leader, who also declined to be named, said that Justice Wajih inquiry report should have been implemented instead of burying it under the carpet. What the masses are expecting from PTI is that it should be a truly democratic political party, he opined.
He claimed that the role of youth, which according to Imran Khan, is no less than an asset for the party as well as the country, has been forced to press the keyboards of computers to waste their time on social media instead giving them some role in active politics.
However, a meeting presided over by PTI Chief Election Commissioner Tasnim Noorani expressed dismay over the delay in finalising the electoral list by a committee formed by the party, saying it could delay the intra-party elections. Noorani also took stock of the preparations made by the commission for holding intra-party elections. He also took notice of grouping within the party by different leaders of the party, and warned that they should not be indulged in something which the party constitution does not allow.