ISLAMABAD - After its prolonged protest movement that had started from August 14 last year with the start of ‘Azadi March’ followed by a sit-in in Islamabad, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) now wants to bring reforms as well as changes in the organizational structure of the party, The Nation has learnt.
Inner feeling within the party is that the workers had staged a sit-in of more than four months at the Constitution Avenue and passed through a long phase of protest movement and now organizational structure of the party should be to first strengthen themselves before another protest movement, background discussions with some PTI leaders revealed. The work had been started in this regard, they added.
Some PTI leaders also see that the party cannot afford another massive protest movement at the moment though Chairman Imran Khan is giving warning shots to the government that he would announce his next course of action on January 18 during his party workers convention in case the government did not form an empowered and inquisitorial judicial commission to investigate the alleged rigging in general elections.
According to a party source, the Central Executive Committee (CEC) meeting of the party was also held, the other day, in the same sprit to look what kind of organizational changes are needed to be introduced. The CEC in its meeting had criticised the decisions of the core committee and said it was not authorised to decide on the issues and it had only advisory role. The meeting was held after a long period of time.
PTI is holding workers conventions through different parts of the country for the same purpose to feel the pulse of the workers.
The has announced to hold workers convention what is being named as ‘azadi dharna’ on January 18 in Islamabad, on February 1 in Karachi, February 8 in Lahore and on 15 of the next month in Peshawar.
The central PTI leadership is running the affairs of the party without elected bodies that were formed as a result of the in-intra party elections in 2013 at least in two provinces including Khyber Pakhtunkhaw and Balochistan and also in the North Punjab.
The PTI central leadership during the sit-in had also suspended the party’s elected president and secretary general of Rawalpindi city where the party has become a major challenge for the ruling PML-N.
Even Secretary General Jehangir Tarin is not the elected representative of the party as he had been notified after PTI’s elected Secretary General Pervez Khattak resigned after his election as CM KP.
Chairman PTI Imran Khan had suspended PTI Rawlpindi President and Secretary General during the sit-in on charges of beating a party volunteer and his relative who was performing security duties around the shipping container of Khan parked at the D Chowk of the Constitution Avenue. PTI President North had also been suspended over the same issue while Secretary General Hina Manzoor later resigned from the post due to her differences with the party over the same matter. The party later notified the acting president for the North Punjab and Rawalpindi city.
Similarly, PTI’s elected bodies in Balochistan and KP did not exist as Balochistan is being run though a three-member committee including Zakrayia Jagozai and Malik Zafar Qasi. PTI Central leadership had suspended the elected body of Balochistan after the party did not get even a single seat of provincial assembly there during the general election and then the party’s performance also remained poor in the local bodies elections.
Similarly, the elected body of PTI in KP is also non-functional after the last general polls as the party President Asad Qaiser was elected as Speaker KP Assembly and Secretary Generak Shaukat Yousafzai was not performing his duties. The party there is also run through an interim arrangement as Azam Khan Swati and Khalid Mahmood are working as acting president and secretary general respectively in KP.