Internal rift costs PTI heavily in Pindi cantts

PTI, PPP, JI and other parties fail to bag even a single seat in 20 wards .

RAWALPINDI:

Development schemes including the multi-billion Metro Bus Project, effective campaigning, organisational restructuring and a host of related developments were some of the factors that contributed to the ruling party’s thumping victory in Rawalpindi and Chaklala cantonment boards’ elections.

The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) routed all the rival parties including the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) despite the fact that the party had bagged one National Assembly and one provincial assembly seat from Rawalpindi with PTI chief Imran Khan representing the constituency in the parliament.

Other opposition parties — Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid, the Awami Muslim League (AML), the Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) and the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) — failed to clinch even a single seat out of the 20 seats of the two cantonments.

The PPP, which ruled the country for five years, etches on harsh memories, as two of its charismatic leaders were slain in the city in the past. The party even couldn’t find candidates in many wards despite offering tickets.

PTI’s poor strategy

Political analysts and party workers pointed internal rifts and other weaknesses as the main cause of the humiliating defeat of PTI.

The PTI had formed a committee comprising local MPAs and office-bearers of the northern Punjab chapter to select candidates. Initially, the committee selected three candidates from each ward asking them to withdraw in each other’s favour through mutual understanding to pave way for one candidate.

When they failed to do so, the committee itself decided to issue tickets and reportedly, issued the tickets on personal liking and disliking that further alienated the workers. The PTI workers were also unhappy with the PTI chief, who has never visited the NA-56 constituency after winning the seat in the 2013 elections.

MPAs also failed to mobilise voters and remained ensnared in personal grudges and groupings within the party.

The PTI chief had dissolved the party’s northern Punjab chapter in 2014 after its president Sadaqat Abbasi and Arif Abbasi allegedly manhandled a security guard of Khan’s container.

Since then, the party is divided in two groups — one led by Sadaqat Abbasi backed by MPAs Arif Abbasi and Rashid Hafeez and the other by MPA Ijaz Khan Jazi and his supporters.

“The candidates of one group were opposed by supporters of the opposite group and the party failed to put up a united front against its rival parties,” said a senior PTI office-bearer requesting not to be named.

The party’s decision to go back to the very parliament, which the party leadership termed fake repeatedly in their speeches during the Islamabad sit-in, was another reason which alienated the workers who kept the sit-in alive through their regular participation.

PPP couldn’t find candidates

“The party was short of candidates and in the end, we have to distribute tickets among the estranged PML-N workers who were denied tickets by their own party,” said Yasir Mughal, a senior PPP activist.

PPP District President Amir Fida Paracha alleged that the PML-N created disturbances in the garb of voters’ list, which led to slow balloting and many party supporters failed to cast votes. The allegations were flatly rejected by PML-N’s Shakeel Awan saying “the defeat is the last nail in the coffin of the party in Pindi”.

The man behind PML-N’s victory

After losing several seats in the 2013 elections, the ruling party ‘re-focused’ its attention on the city by initiating several uplift projects including the Metro Bus Project, which is supposed to benefit a large number of people commuting between the twin cities. To win the elections, the PML-N assigned its senator Chaudhry Tanveer to distribute tickets among the candidates.

The senator not only succeeded in wooing the estranged and old workers of the party but also manage to pick and issue tickets among consensus candidates besides launching a rigorous election campaign from the very first day when the election date was announced.

When other leaders started poking around in the distribution of party tickets, he reportedly telephone to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif requesting him to either stop them from interfering or else he would stop overseeing the elections.

It was being assumed that if PML-N managed to win LG elections, Tanveer will replace Chaudhry Nisar to manage party affairs in the district.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 27^th, 2015.