PESHAWAR:
The rift in the K-P chapter of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) seems to have deepened to the extent that disgruntled workers are forming parallel organisations in the province.
Differences first emerged when the party was defeated in the May 2013 general elections and Khanzada Khan was appointed provincial president following the resignation of Anwar Saifullah Khan. The internal squabble became more evident when key leaders skipped a crucial meeting with Faryal Talpur last year.
Shadow chapters?
The discontent leaders met last Saturday in Peshawar, and reiterated their demand for intra-party polls. And now a worrisome trend of parallel district chapters is slowly emerging in Peshawar and Nowshera.
The PPP leaders hinted parallel chapters would also be set up in other districts of the province soon.
The group of unhappy PPP members said the leadership of the PPP K-P president was useless, adding the same old faces were calling the shots in the province.
“Khanzada Khan is ineffective at best,” said Advocate Farooq Shah, who was named general secretary of the breakaway Peshawar chapter on Saturday. He told The Express Tribune on Monday that Khanzada had failed to organise a single local chapter or workers’ convention. As a result, party workers did not discuss important issues and were unaware of policy matters. “How can they be mobilised in such a situation?” he questioned.
Intra-party polls
Shah said the party’s district chapters were dissolved following last year elections, but the provincial president imposed the same old faces without intra-party polls or taking the opinion of other members.
He said such actions were undemocratic and the breakaway group wanted to inject new blood in the party.
“The time has passed when three to four people used to run party chapters at the ward level. Now we want elections for party posts from the ward-level to the provincial cabinet,” he said.
Shah said his peers had no problems with the nomination of Khanzada as the provincial president, but his responsibilities included making proper appointments, which he failed to do.
“Charsadda, Swabi and Shangla districts are likely to get their [breakaway] chapters in September,” addded Shah.
Taking lead
Isar Nahaqi, who was appointed the Peshawar district president in the parallel set-up, had been made the PPP K-P deputy general secretary earlier in June by Khanzada Khan. However, Nahaqi said workers in the three NA constituencies of Peshawar had sided with the new group and that prompted Nahaqi to resign from his party position.
Senior party leaders, including former K-P assembly speaker Abdul Akbar Khan, Lal Mohammad Khan, former governor Barrister Masood Kausar, Samad Khan, Tariq Khattak, Syed Ayub Shah, Azam Afridi, Mian Muzaffar Shah and several others are among the disgruntled workers. The differences in party ranks can be gauged from the fact that PPP’s NA opposition leader Khurshid Shah visited party leader Syed Zahir Ali Shah in Peshawar on Wednesday, but the provincial president and his cabinet members were absent.
Provincial information secretary Liaquat Shahbab was the only member of PPP’s provincial cabinet present on the occasion.
The other version
Senior party leader Abdul Akbar Khan, speaking at the Express Forum recently said the party leadership had decided to hold elections for party offices, but the provincial chapter nominated its own officials. Akbar Khan dispelled the notion that the party was heading towards a divide and said the issue would be settled at some point.
The party’s deputy information secretary, Gohar Inqilabi, said the disgruntled workers were violating the party’s decisions. He said nobody could be allowed to form their own chapters in the presence of a provincial president and cabinet members. Inqilabi added the central leadership had been informed of the situation and would decide its future course of action in the coming days.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 12th, 2014.
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