PESHAWAR: The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) has decided to launch membership drive in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The decision was made at a meeting presided over by PPP Khyber Pakhtunkhwa President Humayun Khan. The party’s central general secretary Nayyar Hussain Bukhari was also present.
Humayun Khan asked the PPP divisional and district presidents to complete the organisations in their respective areas within one week to get approval from the central leadership. He directed the divisional presidents to refrain from announcing names of office-bearers on their own.
The PPP central leadership has recently notified office-bearers for the party’s wings, including People’s Youth Organisations (PYO), People’s Students Federation (PSF), minority and cultural wings. This provoked the PYO and PSF activists to launch province-wide protests against the nomination and resist the decision.
The senior vice-president for Minority Wing and general secretary for Cultural Wing, Shahzad Afzal Masih and Tahir Abbas, respectively, have resigned in protest. The PPP activists posed a question whether general secretary Faisal Karim Kundi, information secretary Rubina Khalid and other senior leaders had boycotted the meeting in which central general secretary Nayyar Hussain Bukhari was the chief guest.
Contrary to party’s tradition, none of the senior and former office-bearers including Rahimdad Khan, Khanzada Khan, Syed Zahir Ali Shah, Khwaja Mohammad Khan Hoti, Anwar Saifullah Khan, Arbab Alamgir, Asma Alamgir, Kiramatullah Khan, Malik Tehmas, Najmuddin Khan, Ahmad Hassan Khan, Mian Muzaffar Shah, Masood Kausar, Lal Mohammad Khan, Azam Afridi and Malik Waris Khan Afridi were invited to the meeting.
An insider, who was present in the meeting, said the presidents of Malakand, Hazara, Mardan, Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan and Kohat divisions and of the seven tribal agencies of Fata were absent. Only Akhundzada Chattan attended the meeting. The insider claimed that Nayyar Hussain Bukhari questioned the nomination of some PYO office-bearers who were above 35 years of age and had already been rejected due to the age factor. A party leader, wishing not to be named, said that the divisional presidents were in fact, divisional coordinators and important part of the provincial setup of the party.
In our party’s constitution, there were seven divisional coordinators and ex-officio members of the provincial unit of the party.
A PYO dissident, Ghulam Mustafa, said the sitting office-bearers could not complete party’s organisation in any district, tehsil and union council. He said only three provincial office-bearers including the president, general secretary and information secretary, have been announced.
Ghulam Mustafa said the mismanagement had affected PPP’s performance and would also impact its role in the coming elections. He asked the party leadership to take notice of the situation.
Asked whether the office-bearers including those from district and divisional presidents had boycotted the meeting, PPP leader Bahramand Tangi claimed that almost all the members were present.
He said he acted as acting general secretary in the absence of general secretary Faisal Karim Kundi, whose mother was admitted in a hospital in Islamabad. About the differences, Bahramand Tangi argued that only the members of cabinet had to attend the meeting and the senior vice-president, vice-president, deputy information secretary, coordination and office secretaries were present in the meeting.
Regarding the delay in completing the party’s organisations, he said the district and divisional presidents could not send the names on their own. “They have to get signatures from their respective general secretaries, information secretaries and local party’s elders before sending names to the provincial cabinet so that deserving workers are not ignored,” he said. He added that this process was expected to be completed in the coming weeks.
