PTI intra-party elections starting from Nov 2

Around 6 million members will elect close to 70,000 office bearers

LAHORE: As many as 6 million members of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) will elect around 70,000 office-bearers during intra-party elections scheduled from November 2 till the end of December, PTI Central Information Secretary Shafqat Mehmood told The Express Tribune on Thursday.

The party has appointed PTI senior vice president Hamid Khan as its election commissioner for this purpose. The elections will be completed in three phases across the country. In the first phase, elections will be held in the Islamabad Capital Territory, followed by Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa in the second. Elections in the other three provinces will be held in the third phase.

Party members will directly elect office bearers at the union council level, who will then act as the electoral college for tehsil, district, provincial and central offices. The majority of voters will vote through SMS. PTI has purchased state-of-the-art software for this purpose. Mobile voting booths will also be arranged for voters unable to avail the SMS facility.

“We had Pakistan Peoples Party’s experience with its intra-party elections pilot project in mind… If we succeed in electing the party’s electoral college fairly through SMS, then we will use the same method for electing all office-bearers next month,” Mehmood informed this correspondent.

Meanwhile, Hamid Khan said PTI leadership was committed to making it a real democratic party.  He said all arrangements for the elections had been finalised and the process will be conducted in a transparent manner.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 26^th, 2012.