With the elections safely concluded, the post polls period has emerged with murmurs of dissent amongst the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI)’s members as an internal conflict on awarding women’s reserved seats tickets has surfaced.
Fouzia Kasuri, who organised the party’s women’s wing, raised funds for the party through several overseas visits and defended the PTI valiantly in the media, has targeted the top leadership for ignoring her in the allotment of reserved seats’ tickets.
On Saturday, PTI’s female workers held demonstrations in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) against the alleged preference for Pervez Khattak and Asad Qaisar’s close relatives in nominations for women’s reserved seats. Kasuri’s reaction is expected to add fuel to the fire and create problems for the party’s top leaders, as she enjoys tremendous popularity amongst the party’s women workers, having served two terms as women’s wing president.
A source close to Kasuri told Pakistan Today that despite her many sacrifices for the party, including her foreign nationality and career, the top leadership had denied her the primary position in its nomination for the women’s reserved seats in the National Assembly.
“More than once, Imran Khan promised Kasuri the number one slot in the women’s list and praised her for being the most dedicated woman in the party, but now he has chosen someone with questionable intelligence agencies links instead,” said the source while referring to Dr Shireen M. Mazari’s nomination, who is also the party’s incumbent information secretary.
Our source also referred to tweets exchanged between PTI Secretary General Naeem-ul-Haq and Kasuri as proof that she had been promised the number one slot by Khan: in response to Haq’s tweet which said, “Women’s Seats NA: IK (Imran Khan) committed first place to (Shireen) Mazari months ago because she is PTI’s top expert in foreign policy/defence”, Fouzia Kasuri maintained: “If this was an understanding with Mazari, then why did the chairman promise me number 1, not once but twice? “At this juncture, another PTI London Information Secretary Dr Fouzia Sadiq interceded with: “@FauziaKasuri Your contributions to PTI outweigh those of any other PTIan. May be a pressure against PTI & you would have been at No.1.”
Sadiq was referring to Dr Shireen Mazari and her daughter Imaan Hazir Mazari’s revolt just before the elections, when both issued statements against Imran Khan and the PTI and resigned from their offices. On September 25, 2012, Mazari, resigning as PTI central vice president stated, “the party’s program has been taken over by ‘big money’ and this has compromised the party elections.”
However, on March 18 Mazari rejoined the PTI.
Some PTI leaders opined that she had resigned after the PTI’s popularity graph showed a decline, returning after Imran Khan won South and central Punjab’s people during the election campaign.
Another source in the PTI said that the problem was that Khan preferred technical experts over politicians. “I have often witnessed that Khan develops a liking for technocrats and so always takes their advice. In the PTI’s top leadership meetings, he always champions the line adopted by Asad Umar, Jahangir Tareen or Shireen Mazari and does not listen to the political advice of Makhdoom Javed Hashmi or Shah Mahmood Qureshi ” a source inside the PTI said.
The source added that Umar and Mazari had influenced the party’s decisions with fatal consequences at times.
“This is what happened when the PTI could not decide on Tahirul Qadri’s protest, they failed to forge alliances before and after the polls and failed to award party tickets to the right people”, the source added.