How badly is the PTI run?

Senior PTI leaders must stop flaunting their dirty laundry in public

The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) just can’t keep itself out of the news – even if for the wrong reasons. The words of many a seasoned observer are coming true that the PTI, being a hotchpotch of leaders of all categories, was one of the worst internally run political parties in the country. What else can be said of a political entity in which both Shireen Mazari and Fauzia Kasuri, both at loggerheads with each other, can leave the party and expect to return at their former postings with full honour restored. But the PTI seems to be falling apart in the absence of its chairman; first through injury, then through travel. As things stand, there is a need for a serious intervention from Khan or a formalisation of process in the ever more disparate party cadre.

The first to play the exit and re-enter game was Shireen Mazari, who now appears to be an ‘insider’ again and is closely toeing Khan’s line. Then it was Fauzia Kasuri, former president of the PTI women’s wing, who bid a sobbing farewell to the party before returning a month later to address a press conference at the PTI’s central secretariat on Monday. Kasuri said, “I am the PTI. This is my party; nobody can stop me from joining the PTI. I am back with my children of the Insaf Students Federation.” Strange words coming from her when only one senior leader of the PTI women’s wing greeted her on her ‘rejoining’. Kasuri however does not appear to have rejoined in good faith as she said her disputes would still be heard ‘inside the party’ and that she still believed that a ‘mafia’ was working in the party. Her post in the party was introduced as adviser to the PTI chairman on overseas Pakistanis and gender development, again what appears like another token ‘appointment’.

The most controversial figure in the PTI however is fast becoming the PTI Election Commissioner Hamid Khan. After issuing notices to the PTI Khyber Pakhtunkhwa leadership to give up their ‘dual posts’ and hold new elections after Ramadan, the PTI chairman himself had to interject and restore the “status quo… since the PTI constitution was silent over the subject” and asked that the issue be taken up by the central executive committee (CEC). The clear word was that the election commission’s decision was ‘interpretive’. Hamid Khan’s two press releases on the matter were said to have gone against what was agreed in the last PTI CEC. The problem in the PTI appears to be one of conflicting egos. What the PTI leadership must realise is that no party is without disputes, but the way they are flaunting their dirty laundry in public shall make the party a laughing stock and result in confusion amongst the party cadre.