PML-N’s workers wary of PTI’s rising popularity

After a visible realisation in the top echelon of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), party workers at the grassroots level have also started taking Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) as a serious threat for the party in the next election.
In a questionnaire distributed among party workers in the PML-N central general council meeting the other day, a good number of party workers suggested that the PTI could give a tough time to the PML-N in the next election, therefore, the PML-N should not take the potential threat lightly.
In their suggestions, the PML-N councillors also expressed reservations over Shahbaz Sharif’s style of not intermingling with party’s grassroots-level workers and his dependence on the bureaucracy. After a long neglect, PML-N top leaders over the past few days have dubbed Imran Khan and his PTI a pawn of President Asif Ali Zardari for inflicting damage to the Sharifs in the next election by dividing the right-wing vote bank.
In off-the-record talks with Pakistan Today, PML-N parliamentarians admitted that although Imran’s PTI was and would be unable to bag seats in the next general election, its success in maintaining the ground-gaining momentum in the next two years could seriously spoil the PML-N’s election bid.In the said questionnaire, the PML-N had sought suggestions from party workers and leaders on how the party’s organisation could be strengthened at the national, provincial, district and constituency (both national and provincial assembly) levels.
The party had also asked its workers about the name of the party which should be preferred by the PML-N to side with in the next election as well as suggestions for the main points of the PML-N manifesto for the next polls. PML-N’s Deputy Secretary General Ahsan Iqbal had announced during the central general council’s meeting that the questionnaires filled by party workers would be collected during the meeting, but it could not be done due to mismanagement and a number of councillors left with the questionnaires in their hands.
A questionnaire filled by PML-N Okara Youth Wing President Mirza Naeem Baig said for creating discipline within the party, the PML-N should be reorganised on the pattern of Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) and Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM). “The party workers from Southern Punjab should be given more representation in provincial bodies,” Baig suggested. He further writes that the PML-N considered the PPP its contestant at the national level, but it should realise the threat from the PTI and advised the PML-N top command to contest next election on the slogans of ending electricity and gas load shedding and resolving the issues of unemployment and terrorism.
The youth leader also advised the party to organise training workshops for Muslim Student Federation in which leaders like Khwaja Saad Rafique imparted training.Disappointed with Shahbaz Sharif, he said the party was dying in Punjab due to the chief minister’s attitude. “There is a gulf between Shahbaz Sharif and party workers,” he said, adding that the Punjab government should reign in the bureaucracy.
Baig said the PML-N was weakening as its policies did not match with the aspirations of its workers.He said the PML-N was nearly non-existent in Balochistan, Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.