Dissent in the ranks: Hold rigged internal elections again, demands PTI leader

Qureshi says if polls are not held again, members will form another group

KARACHI: Making allegations of rigging, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leader Ashraf Qureshi called for internal party elections to be held again.

Speaking at a press conference at Karachi Press Club on Tuesday, Qureshi said that if the polls were not held again, he along with other disgruntled party members will make another group and run in the local government elections under the PTI symbol of the bat separately.

PTI was the only party that made an internal tribunal but it was of no use, said Qureshi. "The tribunal declared that rigging occurred in the intra-party elections but some party members created hindrances in its decision," he claimed.



"These leaders make decisions on their laptops and want to buy the party with their helicopters and bank balances. They don't know how to prepare for elections," he remarked, saying that all the political parties had been hijacked by one class. "Leaders are not born in drawing rooms; they are created on the streets."

Qureshi complained that PTI chief Imran Khan was no longer accessible to the ordinary party workers because he was always surrounded by this group of leaders. "We appeal to Khan to free the party from these people. We are the actual party — we are the ones who work for its ideology," he declared, flanked by PTI members including Shireen Khan, Asif Hussain, Yaseen Niazi, Abid Shah, Kamran Raza and Shafiq Awan.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 21^st, 2015.