PTI ought to rethink its policy

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) will be further gloomed and doomed beyond retrieval and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) will become uncontrollable if the results of Saturday’s first phase of local bodies’ elections were repeated in the second stage of the exercise after two weeks, especially in Punjab.
The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), which has been down and out since 2013 general elections, will be immensely buoyed up and come out of deep dejection if it was successful in getting results in Sindh identical to the inaugural segment.
If the trend emerging from the first phase heavily impacted the second stage, the PTI is going to suffer too much. Naturally, the PML-N will then be flying too high as it has considered and, rightly so, the PTI its archrival in Punjab because of the latter’s unrelenting campaign and the appeal. The outcome of the first phase in Punjab inflicted a monumental damage to the PTI, and it will need a long time to come out of this state if at all it was able to overcome it.
Although the damage done to the PTI by the maiden process has been gigantic, it may be premature to predict that the party is over. However, the PTI will have to do a lot including cleaning its stables and rethinking its policy if it is poised to bounce back. After in-depth soul-searching, there may be dire need for intense accountability including rolling of heads from top to below.
After all, top party leaders are responsible for this sorry state. The PTI is required to bring about fundamental changes so that it improves its position in the next phases of the local polls. It desperately needs a booster.
The woes of PTI Chairman Imran Khan, who was already down and depressed because of his personal affair, were exceptionally compounded by the electoral results. Had the outcome been remarkably encouraging, he might have come out of his present state, sooner than later.
He restricted himself to his Banigala farmhouse after divorcing his wife on Friday, staying away from public activities. Only on Tuesday, he was seen in public in Peshawar where he, among other activities, released falcons worth Rs110 million, captured by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) government from smugglers, to “live their lives in free environment”.
The move has its own great symbolic value – freeing caged creatures. Maybe it also showed his resolve to pay more attention in future to KP where his party rules. It also marked the end of his forced seclusion. So far, one-sided information has come out that is comforting for Imran Khan and causing discomfiture to Reham Khan, who has so far preferred to hold her side of the story. However, the PTI chairman too has not spoken a word on the split except his first couple of tweets on it to belie ‘propaganda’. He was rightly offended at a reporter’s question related to the disintegration of the wedlock.
The PTI’s performance in Punjab was so abysmal that the seats it got were even less that the seats of the Punjab Assembly that the PML-N had bagged in the 2013 parliamentary polls.
“It was not even in the wildest imagination of the PML-N to secure such a massive victory that it clinched in the local polls. Fear is that the huge win may go to the PML-N’s head,” a senior party leader commented to The News. “In any case we were confident to win majority seats but not this much thumping victory.”
The PTI has two weeks to give a fillip to its election campaign when the second phase would be held on November 19 in 12 districts of Punjab where the PML-N had performed very well in 2013 parliamentary polls. They include Khanewal, Sahiwal, Toba Tek Singh, Chiniot, Sargodha, Mianwali, Sheikhupura, Gujranwala, Hafizabad, Mandi Bahauddin, Attock and Jhelum districts.
At the same time, polling will be held in 15 districts of Sindh including Matiari, Tando Allah Yar, Tando Mohammad Khan, Thatta, Sujawal, Badin, Hyderabad, Dadu, Jamshoro, Benazirabad, Naushero Feroz, Sanghar, Mirpurkhas, Umerkot and Tharparkar.
Thus, except for Karachi the entire Sindh will be covered by the process of local elections while the third phase will be held in the six districts of the biggest city on December 5. The Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) will naturally fare better in Hyderabad than the PPP, which, however, is likely to do well or may repeat the first phase in the remaining districts of the interior Sindh.