LAHORE - PTI, which has grabbed a symbolic victory over the ruling party with decision against Khawaja Saad Rafique in NA-125, needs thorough internal accountability to transform the symbolic victory into electoral win.
Although an election tribunal decision on Monday (May 4) gave a symbolic victory to the PTI over PML-N, the party’s old guard believe PTI needs thorough internal accountability for Cantonment Boards local bodies polls’ to grab an electoral victory in NA-125 and PP-155.
The election tribunal’s decision which struck Saad Rafique related to the same NA-125, which covers large parts of Walton Cantonment Board in which PTI had secured only a single ward (seat) out of the total ten seats during the recently held cantt polls. While the PTI leaders demanded thorough probe into the performance of the district leaders for miserably failing to bring good results for the party.
The provincial capital, which houses two Cantonment Boards with 20 wards (seats) namely Lahore Cantonment and Walton Cantonment gave only five seats to the PTI from both zones because of the poor performance of the city chapter leadership steered by Aleem Khan.
PTI chairman, Imran Khan taking notice of the news reports of internal rifts and wrong selection of candidates that brought crushing defeat to the party in provincial capital and some other Cantonment Boards constituted an inquiry committee under the chair of Chaudhary Sarwar to carry out a detailed investigation into the procedure followed for the award of party tickets.
The committee has been directed to give special focus to Lahore, which is highly significant for PTI in a bid to challenge the claim of the PML-N over the provincial capital. Districts of Rawalpindi, Gujranwala, Sargodha and Sialkot have also been marked for thorough probe.
PTI old guard including Waqar Khan, Rana Saleem, Shabbir Sial and Aqeel Siddiqi shared their feelings about party’s success chances after the decision relating to NA-125. They remarked that there was a lot of potential among the party’s active support base and volunteers to transform symbolic victory into electoral victory but the ‘prerequisite’ for the electoral win was thorough and ruthless accountability of the party leaders who brought defeat for the party during the local polls in Lahore and other areas.
They added that PTI has to face the ruling party which has all the means at its disposal to allure the voters and the tsunami could defeat them but only if the wrong doers of the city chapter leadership including the president would be held accountable in true manner under Ch Sarwar inquiry commission.
PTI old guard said the party chairman was prompted by the news reports of this correspondent to direct the party’s secretary general to constitute an inquiry committee to probe into the miserable performance of party’s local leaderships in Lahore and other districts during the Cantt polls.
They were of the considered opinion that without fixing responsibility of Boards polls’ defeat in Lahore, the morale of the party activists could not be boosted for getting victory for the party in the bye-polls of NA-125 and PP-155.