PTI leaders left red-faced after Khan’s solo flight

• Senior PTI leaders criticise Khan for using ‘inappropriate’ words such as ‘lockdown’ during Nov 30 gathering and announcing protest dates without core committee’s approval compelling PTI’s Qureshi to announce revised schedule

Pakistan Today has learnt that the top ranks of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) harshly criticised their party chief Imran Khan over his use of words such as “lockdown” as he announced “Plan C” on Sunday, leaving them red-faced and compelling the party hierarchy to reschedule the entire plan and announce a revised schedule only 16 hours later.

Despite an impressive power show by PTI on Sunday, national media and political leaders lambasted Khan for using “inappropriate and harsh words” by threatening to “lockdown the entire country” on December 16 if the government did not resume dialogue with PTI for formation of a judicial commission for election audit.

The politicians had claimed that Khan had chosen December 16 which was the day when “Pakistan Army suffered a defeat on the hands of Indian forces who had breached international laws and invaded East Pakistan, now called Bangladesh”.

Sources in the PTI told Pakistan Today that the criticism started soon after Khan’s speech as the dates announced for the protests were not finalised in the recent core committee meeting of the party ‎while words such as “lockdown” or “jam” were also not approved by the decision-making body.

“The PTI core committee had approved a proposal to announce Plan C comprising a schedule for staging sit-ins on major roads in three ‎major commercial hubs of the country – Lahore, Karachi and Faisalabad. However, the use of harsh words and wrong dates provided an opportunity to our critics and opponents to tag PTI as ‘enemy of Pakistan’,” the source added.

The source said that the top party leaders were annoyed over Khan’s close aides suggesting him controversial dates for the protests and asking him to use such words which triggered misunderstanding, compelling PTI Vice Chairman Shah Mahmood Qureshi to make clarifications the other day.

Another PTI leader said that senior party leaders, including Justice (r) Wajihuddin Ahmed, Hamid Khan, Shafqat Mahmood and Dr Arif Alvi had‎ expressed their reservations in their separate messages to Imran Khan.

The source added that since Lahore was home to the Sharif family and Punjab chief minister was looking for a strategy to foil PTI’s move, the party had decided that the Lahore protest should be kept in the end so that a momentum could be achieved prior to the Lahore sit-in.

“The core committee had decided that sit-ins would be staged on major roads and avenues of Faisalabad, Lahore and Karachi to ensure that traffic is stopped to register our protest. However, a wrong message of lockdown was conveyed due to Khan’s use of words and the spin-doctors of PML-N government took advantage of the situation, trying to tag PTI as anti-people and against the business community,” the source said, adding that due to the same reasons, Qureshi had to clarify the situation and present the revised schedule.

When asked whether the party was involved in a major controversy over the lockdown announcement of the party in major cities of the country, Justice (r) Wajihuddin Ahmed said that‎ the matter was a subject of debate within the party thus he could not breach party’s trust by making a statement.

However, he said that the party had evolved a strategy to pressurise the government to bring them to the dialogue process. “Although an agreement on broad points had been achieved during previous meetings with the negotiators yet the nitty-gritty of dialogue was not discussed. PTI wants electoral reforms and since the local body polls are nearing, reforms process is a must,” he added.

Asked whether the PTI wanted a lockdown of major financial hubs of the country, Wajihuddin said that nobody was happy with locking down the country.