After changing four parties, where would he go next?

Uncertain political career of Khwaja Hoti

PESHAWAR: One has lost count of the political parties that former provincial and federal minister Khwaja Muhammad Khan Hoti has changed during the course of his eventful career in politics.

He recently rejoined the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) after spending a number of years in other parties. This time though he is back in the PPP as an ordinary worker, or leader to be correct, without holding an office in the party. The last time he was in the PPP he was its provincial president and had served as a minister as well. This is quite a fall in terms of his importance to the PPP.

Khwaja Muhammad Hoti's return to the PPP fold happened after spending time in three political parties, all with different ideologies and policies. After sometimes operating as an independent politician doing Mardan politics in his hometown, he turned a Pakhtun nationalist and joined the Awami National Party (ANP). The transition brought him some reward as he was elected MNA on the ANP ticket from Mardan and the party leadership made him a minister of state and even changed his portfolio to keep him amused.

Fed up with the ANP and accusing its leadership of involvement in corruption, he joined Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) to ride the new wave of "Naya Pakistan" that Imran Khan was riding and leading.

He organised a big public meeting to announce his change of party and leader. However, to his bad luck, he left the PTI before the 2013 general election that was decisively won by the party in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Imagine what would have happened had he stayed on in the PTI.

He could have become one of its top leaders and even challenged Pervez Khattak for the job of chief minister by winning a provincial assembly seat.

The same fate befell another PPP veteran, Iftikhar Jhagra, who also made the bad choice of quitting the PTI when it was about to win the polls in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Iftikhar Jhagra too could become a strong candidate for the chief minister's office in case he had remained associated with the PTI because the party didn't have many seasoned politicians in its ranks.

 Khwaja Muhammad Hoti, who has seldom made a timely decision while changing parties, next hopped on to the PakistanMuslim League-Nawaz (PML-N). The party was in power, but he wasn't an elected lawmaker so his importance to the party was symbolic only. His recent decision to quit the PML-N again seems to be bad timing because the PML-N under Amir Muqam's leadership is making a major bid for power in the province in alliance with Maulana Fazlur Rahman's JUI-F in next year's general election.

There weren't many parties that Khwaja Muhammad Hoti could have joined this time so the better choice was to return to the PPP. The party has yet to get rehabilitated in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa after getting trounced along with his coalition partner, ANP, in the 2013 polls.

This could be another bad timing to join a declining party. However, he is undeterred and would certainly be contesting for the National Assembly seat from Mardan on the PPP ticket in the next general election.

Khanzada Khan is the only worthwhile PPP candidate for the National Assembly in the PPP, but he is now a member of the Senate. This would make it easy for Khwaja Muhammad Hoti to get the ticket of a party for which there may not be many takers.

It is unclear yet that his son Omar Farooq Hoti would follow him into the PPP and remain associated with the PTI. There have been times when the father and son have been in different political parties.

As politics has become a costly affair, they have had to sell some of their considerable ancestral land to contest elections. However, their impulsive decisions changing parties has damaged their reputation and made it difficult for them to adjust in one or the other party. 

One doesn't know which party Khwaja Muhammad Hoti will join if he doesn't get the PPP ticket for the next polls or loses the election. Could it be the JUI-F or the Jamaat-i-Islami, or perhaps one of the four parties with which he has was associated until now?