No party can run on slogans alone
Imran Khan has given sufficient time to politics of agitation. There is a lot more that is needed to run a party. Having lived and studied in Britain for a while, Khan often refers to some of the positive aspects of the British political culture. He needs to be reminded that party system enjoys a central position in parliamentary politics. The two major parties in the United Kingdom give special importance to their programmes. Both have well-defined political platforms which differentiate them from one another. Whatever third force has emerged from time to time to challenge the two party system also invariably put forth the precise differences it had with others.
Imran Khan needs to give importance to party building now. A party cannot run on slogans alone. It has to work out the party position on all major issues. The PTI leadership needs clarity on some of the most important matters to avoid embarrassment caused by statements by its leaders. Last year a PTI MNA stunned everyone in the NA when he demanded former Governor Taseer’s killer who had been convicted to be freed “honourably.” A disconcerted Arif Alvi had to clarify that what his colleague had said was the “view of an individual” and not a policy of the party. Now another well known MNA has declared all non-Muslims living in Pakistan as ‘Kaafir’ in a TV show. One is yet to know the party’s official stand on the matter, which is replete with numerous implications. Explaining it away as the opinion of an individual will not do. The outrageous remark has already elicited a strong protest from PTI’s own central president of the minority wing.
It is time PTI discouraged the aggressive tendencies in its activists which have been strengthened no doubt by Imran Khan’s frequent recourse to unguarded language and offensive style of addressing his critics and opponents. The way some of PTI’s district level leaders beat up two party activists for which they had to be suspended indicates the chickens have come home to roost.