PTI to opt for ‘legal eagles’ for its polls tickets

Screening of candidates underway; names likely to be announced by time ECP issues election schedule

ISLAMABAD:

Amid complaints of political engineering and not being provided a level playing field, the PTI is all set to distribute party tickets to suitable candidates for the general elections announced to be held on February 8 next year.

While pre-empting that the PTI might lose its candidates just the way the PML-N did before the 2018 elections, the party has decided that majority of the tickets would be given to lawyers this time as they not only stood by it in testing times but could effectively deal with legal issues that might arise before the polls.

Despite being pushed down and entangled in legal cases, PTI officials said the party’s founder Imran Khan would finalise its candidates, whose names would then be announced by the newly-elected PTI chairman, Barrister Gohar Khan.
“The process of finalising the party’s candidates is in its final phase,” PTI leader Shoaib Shaheen told The Express Tribune.

He added that the party’s core committee was looking into the matter and interviewing potential candidates.
Shaheen, who is a key member of the PTI’s legal team, said the party would issue tickets to candidates across the country, saying there was no problem in filling the space left by those who abandoned the party in the wake of the violence on May 9 this year following Imran’s arrest.

The PTI had landed in hot waters after May 9 as it faced a massive crackdown after its enraged activists and supporters allegedly attacked key military installations.

The army had declared May 9 as a black day with its media wing stating that “this group wearing a political cloak” had done what the country’s enemies could not achieve in 75 years in its “lust” for power.

Recently, caretaker Prime Minister Anwaarul Haq Kakar maintained that the government would endeavour to provide a level playing field to all political parties.

However, he adding that those thinking that the recent past events would be forgotten and “arsonists” be treated like other political players were mistaken – apparently indirectly referring to the PTI.

Shaheen said there was no shortage of candidates for the PTI. He continued that the PTI candidates’ names would be announced in the coming days.

Most probably, he added, the names would be announced by the time the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) issued the polls schedule.

Although many legal eagles would be contesting the polls on the PTI’s ticket, Shaheen said the electables could not completely be eliminated from the scene.

He said the electables, young and old party activists as well as those who stood by the PTI when it needed the most would be given preference for the tickets.

Another PTI leader, who did not want to be named, said the process would gear up once the party retained its popular electoral symbol of the ‘cricket bat’ from the ECP.

The PTI conducted its intra-party polls, sidelining its founding chairman and elect a new one after the ECP declared that the party would lose its electoral symbol of the cricket bat if it did not hold its internal polls before December 13.

Initially, the PTI had announced that it would challenge the commission’s decision before the relevant forum but then decided otherwise.

Subsequently, the PTI held its intra-party polls on December 2 to fulfill the ECP’s requirement and submitted its report to the electoral watchdog so that it could retain its symbol.

When the ECP announced its verdict on November 23, it felt that the PTI was losing its grip on the bat, which once manifested Imran’s populist convictions of good governance as well as showed his commitment to eradicate corruption within 90 days, among other things.

However, the PTI is now hopeful that it would retain its electoral symbol and contest the next general polls with it.

The only other hurdle could be the decision of a founding member of PTI, Akbar S Babar, of challenging the PTI’s intra-party polls before ECP.

Confirming that the process of screening candidates was under way, the PTI leader said the party would quickly distribute tickets once the ECP announced that it could retain its electoral symbol.

Apart from the prominent leaders still with the PTI, he seconded that lawyers would receive more tickets, saying that Imran had even chosen a lawyer as the party chairman when he was in jail facing multiple cases and might not receive relief anytime soon.

As the country approaches the February 8 general elections, concerns about political engineering mounted with the PTI leaders’ scripted interviews, post-release re-arrests, almost one-sided media trials and TV ban on mentioning Imran’s name as they all contributed to the growing doubts over the fairness and transparency of the upcoming polls.

Although the ‘powerful circles’ have routinely asserted themselves in the country over the years, analysts have not just sounded the alarms on the current wave but declared that the political engineering today was proving to be worse and insidious than before.

They say the challenges posed by contemporary political manipulation were casting a long shadow over the fairness of the electoral process.