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Imran warns he may dissolve KP Assembly
Shaheen Sehbai
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
From Print Edition
WASHINGTON: PTI chief Imran Khan says he may dissolve the Khyber-Pukhtunkhwa Assembly and call fresh elections to seek a new mandate if his government is pushed against the wall, a statement that reflects a growing sense of frustration in the PTI ranks. But Khan says he will exhaust all other options first and dissolving the KPK Assembly will depend on how they push us against the wall.
His first stop, however, will be to quit the government and sit in the opposition.In interactions with me on these critical issues, Imran Khan is very clear in his mind. Either he will run the KP the way he wants or he will not stick around like other political parties, running in circles doing nothing.
Khans threat to dissolve the assembly could become a serious problem, if ever that stage was allowed to be reached by the Center, especially for Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who is so far showing respect for democratic traditions and allowing the opposition to operate in a free and uninterrupted manner despite the sporadic incidents of beating up of PTI workers in Lahore or the terrorism case against a private TV channel in Quetta for showing the coverage of attack on the Ziarat Residency of the Quaid.
The PMs immediate rebuke to his own brothers Punjab administration when a rally by the PTI was lathi-charged in Lahore helped strengthen this impression that Sharif was so far sticking to the ways of a democratic polity. His reaction to the terrorism FIR in Quetta against the ARY TV channel will further determine where he wants to go.
He has also shown an exceptional courtesy and protocol to outgoing President Asif Ali Zardari and will be officially bidding him farewell at the end of his tenure. He has personally visited the house of the Leader of the Opposition Syed Khurshid Shah and besides offering condolences discussed important issues of the appointment of the CEC and the new NAB chairman as well.
All these gestures do not indicate that the fears of Imran Khan that he may be pushed to the wall will come true.But Khan thinks the PML-N is good in sending politically correct messages but ruthless when its political interests are at stake and this, he says, was witnessed in the by-polls in Mianwali where he had won on May 11 and lost on Aug 22.
In Mianwali, he told me: The Punjab government did what it does best massive rigging.While the national average of (turnout) in by-elections was around 35 percent, in Mianwali it shot up to over 80 percent, Khan said alleging that his men had caught a truckload of ballot boxes.
Not only the police and administration was used but we have pictures of one of PML-N losing candidates carrying a van with ballot boxes, Imran says, asserting that he has gone to test the electoral process by filing petitions in the tribunals and is going to the courts but if nothing works, he will use other options.
Imran Khans point is worth considering as by-elections are always a tame and slow moving affair but an 80 percent voter turnout, when on the streets and at polling stations these huge crowds were hardly visible, indicates some hanky panky which needs to be fully and transparently probed.
Imrans complaint about Mianwali gets more weight when he totally admits his partys blunder and failure in Peshawar where his candidate lost to Ghulam Ahmed Bilour on NA-1 and while he had received about 90,000 votes, his candidates dropped to only around 25,000.
His party was also split in two camps and the other candidate Samad Mursaleen, who many thought was considered better, refused to accept the party decision and continued to fight, taking away several thousand votes. He has also formed a splinter PTI group that is now called PTI-N (Nazariati).
Samad Mursaleen has not totally lost hope and he told me in a detailed discussion that he was still a staunch follower of Imran Khan and was waiting for his decision as the results of the NA-1 have proved that the selection of the candidate was wrong.
The credit for admitting his mistake totally must however be given to Imran Khan. He told me: The NA-1 seat (fiasco) was entirely PTIs fault and we have called the CEC to make long overdue reforms in the partys structure.
Khan calls the NA-1 episode almost a suicide by PTI which means that he is prepared to sit down and have a close look at what went wrong and how to correct it.
This, however, is as important for him as for the party because there is a growing feeling within the PTI that Khan is surrounded by some people who do not let him take the correct decisions, although Khan hears all sides and gives time to everyone but at the end of the day the close circle prevails.
This became evident in the crisis that has gripped the party in the US where a lot of PTI donors, who collected millions for the party before the elections, are now demanding an independent audit of the accounts and say Imran Khan acted without authority to change the directors of PTI-US LLC, a company registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) in the US to promote the PTI and collect funds.
Imran says the audit is being conducted and there are no irregularities and the report will be made public as soon as it is ready.
Yet the fact is that all these issues keep cropping up within PTI and either Imran Khan himself, or his close associates, do not anticipate these problems or do not take the much-needed corrective action before things blow up in the public. They have to quickly get their act together and put their own house in order before they can take on other bigger political opponents.
SOURCE:
Imran warns he may dissolve KP Assembly - thenews.com.pk
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