Sidelining old guard, embracing newcomers in PTI

PESHAWAR: The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leadership in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has resolved differences among its leaders but some party people are believed to be still in conflict with each other on certain issues.

In the previous PTI government, headed by Chief Minister Pervez Khattak, a number of senior party members were in direct confrontation with each other and had developed serious differences.

The differences between Pervez Khattak and his two influential cabinet members Mohammad Atif Khan and Shahram Khan Tarakai were known to everybody.

Their differences didn’t stop even after the general election as both Pervez Khattak and Atif Khan used their influence to become chief minister of the province.

Imran Khan had to intervene to resolve the issue. It benefitted little known Mahmood Khan who got the prized position of chief executive of the province.

In initial days there were reports that Atif Khan and Shahram Tarakai were not on the same page with Chief Minister Mahmood Khan on certain issues.

The two cabinet members, however, recently met the chief minister and reportedly assured him of their full support.

Pervez Khattak is now following the party line and reportedly trying to get a berth in the provincial cabinet for his brother.

Mahmood Khan is presently stated to be a strong man in the province due to his loyalty and obedience to party chairman and Prime Minster Imran Khan.

Provincial Information Minister Shaukat Yousafzai is stated to be one of the oldest PTI workers and a diehard supporter of Imran Khan.

Someone has rightly stated that all those who joined PTI soon after its launch and remained associated with Imran Khan during difficult days of his political career were sidelined, victimised by the influential opportunists or forced to quit the party.

Senior PTI members told The News that Shaukat Yousafzai until now had good relations with Chief Minister Mahmood Khan and used to accompany him during almost all his visits.

Being an information minister, he was spokesman for the government and chief minister.

But then all of a sudden, according to PTI sources, the party leadership cut his powers as a spokesman for the government and chief minister.

The party has appointed Ajmal Wazir as spokesman for the government and chief minister.

Ajmal Wazir, a former Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) office-bearer, originally belongs to Shakai area of South Waziristan tribal district. He was raised in Dera Ismail Khan, got his education in Peshawar and lived in Islamabad. He started his political career from an agency councillor in 2002.

He joined PTI in 2017. In the party circles, Ajmal Wazir is known as a soft-spoken person.

In the previous PTI government, Shaukat Yousafzai was first given two important portfolios, health and information, and soon afterwards relieved of both his responsibilities due to reasons best known to the PTI leadership.

According to sources, he remained loyal to Pervez Khattak when grouping for the first time emerged in the party. However, some circles alleged that it was Pervez Khattak who sidelined Shaukat Yousafzai and made him controversial in the eyes of party leadership.

Shaukat Yousafzai belongs to Shangla district in Malakand division, but had won election from Peshawar in the 2013 general election.

For five years he believed he would again contest from Peshawar and thus paid little attention to his hometown, Shangla. A few weeks before the general election 2018, PTI leadership asked him to contest from his native town. “There were general feelings that some powerful people in the party didn’t want to see Shaukat Yousafzai back in the assembly and that’s why asked him to contest from Shangla,” a Peshawar-based PTI leader told The News. He said Shaukat Yousafzai was member of the first PTI cabinet made in 1996. Except him and another party member, also sidelined now, most of the people prominent in the party then had quit the party due to one or other reason. He was an active young journalist when he joined PTI and was stated to be media advisor of Imran Khan.