Reminiscing lost glory: PTI founding members ask Imran to face accountability

Group delegates claim party falling into hands of ‘political pirates’.

ISLAMABAD: A group of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s (PTI) founding members teamed up on Sunday to revive the party’s lost glory and rejected appointment of all office-bearers without intra-party elections and demanded resignation of K-P Chief Minister Pervaiz Khattak.

Later, the group adopted a declaration stating: “Imran Khan as chairman of the party has, prima facie, failed to enforce fundamental principles of transparency, accountability, and merit in the party. Therefore, the conference demands that in the larger interest of the party and to preserve and promote its founding ideology of change, he should offer himself for full accountability before an independent accountability commission to be set up within the party.”

During the conference, there was a consensus that as PTI’s popularity grew, so did the urge of ‘rental politicians’ to cash in on its political capital. The conference regretted that there are a few instances in political history that a party at its populist peak was commandeered by its ‘founder-in-chief’ into the hands of ‘political pirates’.

The conference was convinced that a party on a high moral pedestal of transparency and accountability should have traveled the extra mile to practice what it had preached. Despite the availability of ample evidence, it failed to hold its party and public office holders accountable for alleged massive corruption. Instead of reprimanding the corrupt, PTI punished those who tried to hold the corrupt accountable.

Former founding members of the party expressed dismay that PTI’s constitution remained in abeyance and dictatorship prevailed in the party. Furthermore, intra party elections were postponed indefinitely and the party continued to be run on the whims of a few political opportunists.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 5^th, 2016.