ISLAMABAD – The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) has failed to meet the four deadlines it had set for the party’s reorganisation by electing its office-bearers at all tiers and till date the affairs of the party are being run through the organising committees.
After failure to meet three deadlines earlier set for party’s reorganisation, the PML-N has again failed to complete intra-party elections process from Primary Unit to Central level by January 15 which was announced as party’s fourth deadline. The PML-N had decided in the first week of November 2010 in the party’s central organising committee meeting that the intra-party elections at local (primary units, tehsils, districts and divisions) as well as at provincial and central levels would be completed before January 15, 2011 but the party again failed to start election process from the bottom. The PML-N chief had dissolved party’s structural organisations in September 2009 announcing that the intra-party polls would be held in March 2010. Later on, the party announced that the elections would be held by August 14, 2010 which were again differed till September 30, 2010 but yet again the deadline was missed. Then the party cited ‘political uncertain conditions’ in the country and the last summers floods as the reason for the delay.
Though the party has constituted central and provincial organizing committees, a source in the PML-N said that the formation of organising committees at the primary unit level was still under process. “Once these committees are constituted, the election process will start from local levels culminating at the centre,” said the source. The source said that the formation of organising committees at local levels in Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa was near completion while in Sindh and Balochistan even district organising committees had not been formed yet. PML-N MNA Baleegh-ur-Rehman said that in Punjab organising committees for local level had been constituted under supervision of Zulfiqar Khosa, Khwaja Saad Rafique and Hamza Shahbaz.
Another party source said that intra party differences at the local and regional level were the main obstacle in the timely formation of organising committees. “What happened few days back in Multan between Javed Hashmi and Rana Mehmood-ul-Hassan groups was the reflection of such differences which occur within party,” he added. The party’s chief Nawaz Shaif in a November meeting had also asked party’s top brass to make party membership campaign ‘more aggressive’ for local bodies’ elections. A source in PML-N said that it was expected that Nawaz Sharif would be the future party president while Shahbaz Sharif might be elected as party’s Punjab chapter head. When contacted Khuda-e-Noor, PML-N chief organizer in Balochistan said that divisional organizing committees in the province had been made while district organising committees were also complete but their announcement was still pending. He hoped party elections process in Balochistan might be completed in two months. Saleem Zia, party’s chief organizer Sindh said that the process of intra-party polls from local level in Sindh was likely to start within a month. Senator Raja Zafar-ul-Haq said that the party’s reorganisation process was moving ahead step by step. “I think the process of intra-party elections will be completed in the month of March 2011,” he added.
