Despite the popularity of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan in Karachi and some other areas of Sindh, rifts among provincial leaders of the party have shaken up the party’s organisational structure in the province that may affect its performance in the upcoming general elections.
The party during the last few months has been going through a difficult situation as a number of its leaders and workers were arrested or whisked away from their homes. Several members of the party’s social media team are allegedly missing.
Sindh PTI President Ali Haider Zaidi has been under arrest in a property fraud case. His inability to manage the provincial chapter of the party due to being in custody is likely to weaken the party in Karachi as well as remote districts of the province.
According to informed sources, some senior leaders of the PTI’s Sindh chapter have been sidelined or they deliberately do not attend the party meetings. In addition, a new debate of local leadership and non-local leadership has also been started within the party.
Those who call themselves ideological party workers are not ready to accept those who ethnically belong to other provinces as leaders like Khurrum Sher Zaman, Raja Azhar, Arsalan Taj, Faheem Khan and Saeed Ahmad Afridi.
These sources say that leaders who originally hail from Sindh such as Liaquat Jotoi, Arbab Ghulam Rahim, Nisar Ahmed Shar and Haleem Adil Sheikh are also not on the same page. Ashraf Jabbar Qureshi, who is a founding member of the PTI, has differences with Alamgir Khan and Zaidi’s group.
Political analysts are of the view that because of these differences, the party has not been able to form a strong organisational structure in remote districts of the province to compete with the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP).
At present, the party has no choice other than making alliances with nationalist parties or the major alliance of some of those nationalist parties — Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA).
Journalist Arman Sabir told The News that the PTI needed to reorganise itself with full potential and strength across Sindh. He added that the party also lacked such personalities from Sindh who could be acceptable to all ethnic groups or at least they could organise the party against the strong political presence of the PPP.
“During Imran Khan’s government, the party could have attracted more people from rural Sindh to its side. The party also had an opportunity to restructure itself in rural Sindh, but Khan’s government and leaders simply neglected to do so. One of the main reasons was that the PTI had made an alliance with the GDA and it still preferred to go with alliances rather than organising the party,” said Sabir.
The journalist also pointed out that during a public gathering last month, Karachi PTI President Aftab Siddiqui snatched the microphone from the hands of senior leader Firdous Shamim Naqvi in front of hundreds of party workers. The clip of this incident also went viral on social media.
Later, Siddiqui met Imran Khan and made a complaint against Zaidi and his loyals blaming them for interfering in the Karachi matters of the party that did not come under their jurisdiction. After replacing Bilal Ghaffar as the Karachi PTI president, Siddiqui brought his own team to break the hegemony of dominant leaders in the party.
Senior Journalist Imitiaz Khan Faran said the differences between Sindh PTI leaders gave political advantage to the PPP not only in Karachi but all over Sindh. “Recently we observed that the PPP defeated the PTI in the NA-237 Malir by-election.
He remarked that one of the main reasons behind the PTI’s defeat was that the party leaders were not active to organise and strengthen the organisational structure of the party even in the city.
He said there was no organisational structure of the PTI in the rural and remote districts of Sindh. The presence of the party was very nominal in cities like Sukkur, Hyderabad and Badin, and other small cities and towns and it could not give tough to parties like the PPP there, Faran said. “The differences within the party will definitely affect the party’s performance and elections results in the upcoming general elections in Karachi.”
However, academic and journalist Prof Dr Tauseef Ahmed Khan believes that differences within the provincial leaders of the PTI would not be considered a big issue until a group of them joined other parties or formed a separate party. Otherwise, such differences had no significant impact, he added. “Imran Khan is still the centre of gravity for voters. People don’t vote for other leaders of the PTI and this trend was also observed in the 2018 elections when many of the victorious PTI leaders were even not sure that they had won the polls.”