PM orders action over K-P poll fiasco

ISLAMABAD/ PESHAWAR:

Smarting from an electoral rebuke in the ruling party’s stronghold, Prime Minister Imran Khan on Wednesday instructed Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) Chief Minister Mehmood Khan to serve show-cause notices on lawmakers and leaders who turned against the party’s decision and “pedalled out of the party’s folds” during the recently-held local bodies elections.

The directives came following PM Imran’s meeting with the K-P chief minister in the federal capital, wherein the latter presented a report that revealed the underlying reasons for the PTI’s defeat in the local body polls, party insiders said.

The report, submitted in the wake of allegations that some party members had gone against the party’s decisions to favour opponents, laid bare the internal differences and issues related to the allocation of party tickets for the elections.

The report attributes the PTI’s defeat in the first phase of the elections to "mismanagement" and that "workers of the same party contested elections against each other."

Earlier in the day, the premier took to his official Twitter handle to appreciate the silver lining to the otherwise disappointing defeat and said that “amidst the noise over K-P LG [elections] no one realises these elections are the start of modern, devolved LG system as exists in successful democracies.”

However, in the same breath, he admitted that the PTI had made “mistakes” in the local government elections and pinned the blame on "wrong candidate selection”.

He noted that his party had “paid the price” for its mistakes and wrote that he would “personally” be overseeing PTI’s LG election strategy in the second phase of K-P’s local body polls as well as those held across the country.

Read More: Report on PTI’s defeat in K-P LG polls prepared

‘Internal competence’

During the meeting with K-P’s chief, sources said that the premier expressed dissatisfaction over the party's failure in the local body elections and regretted that that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was their [PTI] baseline and the party lost the election due to “internal incompetence.”

Besides, the astonishing report pointed out that the main reason for PTI's defeat, apart from inflation, was major internal differences within the party, with some members of the assembly not supporting the PTI nominees.

It cites "the poor selection of candidates” as one of the factors that led to the electoral setback and notes that the party lacked unity during the first phase of the elections.

Meanwhile, some PTI lawmakers, including Minister for Labour Shaukat Yousafzai, termed inflation as the reason behind PTIs’ defeat in the local body elections.

However, Deputy Speaker K-P Assembly Mehmood Jan went on to call out those who openly went against the party decisions.

“I cannot speak about every district in Peshawar but in my constituency, MNA Noor Alam openly supported the JUI-F candidate and MPA Arbab Waseem supported the independent candidate,” Jan said, regretting that those who won on “bat” [referring to party ticket] had sold their votes for money.

Apart from Alam and Waseem, MNA Nasir Musazai was also seen speaking at a public gathering organized by an independent candidate for Tehsil Badhber.

Musazai alleged that Governor K-P Shah Farman always made his own decisions and never preferred to consult party workers, adding he only awarded party tickets to his “blue-eyed person”.

“My candidate, who contested independently, bagged around 12000 votes, whereas Farman’s man could only secure 7000 votes,” Musazai told The Express Tribune, adding that, “now I will serve them a show-cause notice for refusing to accept my candidate”.

He also stated that if the governor wanted him out of politics, he will contest as an independent candidate if the party denied him a ticket in the next general elections.

The ruling party had faced startling setbacks in most areas with the candidates of the opposition parties managing to defeat its nominees. The PTI lost the Peshawar mayor seat to the JUI-F with a wide margin.

The results of the LG polls in K-P -- ruling PTI’s stronghold -- had come as a shot in the arm for the emboldened opposition parties as they seized on the electoral setback to berate the government.