PESHAWAR, May 26: Most of the senior leaders of Pakistan People’s Party, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, have urged the central leadership to focus on reorganisation of the party from grassroots to top level and give due weight to the ideological workers in order to reactivate them across the country.

Reacting to the information that the central leadership had called a meeting of only party’s ticket-holders to know the reasons behind the defeat, they said that all the senior leaders and ticket-holders should be present in the next meeting so as to openly discuss the issues.

During background interviews some of the senior leaders opined that the PPP affairs needed a major overhaul at all levels to purge it of all those occupying key positions by influencing the central leaders instead of having support of the local workers.

They said that in many districts the party had parallel groups and each one was claiming to be the representative of the party and workers, but the provincial leadership never bothered to resolve the differences among them.

They said that the main cause of the PPP’s crushing defeat in May 11 elections was the negligence of former ministers of the party who never gave respect to workers and rather avoided meeting their demands and attending their phone calls.

They urged the leadership to take strict action against the former ministers who failed to serve masses and then managed to get election tickets.

They suggested that intra-party elections of the PPP should be held on the pattern of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf so that the workers could elect representatives of their choice and then give results in next elections.

However, former provincial president Rahim Dad Khan opposed the idea of intra-party elections and feared that such practices could ignite further groupings. The best way, he suggested, was to elect the office-bearers through consensus of the workers at all levels.

Referring to the PTI’s intra-party elections, he claimed that its leaders had developed serious differences and the party had almost split into two groups, but it got advantage of the elections which came soon and the leaders had to forget their differences.

He said that the PPP was the largest party with millions of workers, and it was impossible to solve demands of all the people.

“We mainly focused on collective nature works during five years in government. The NFC award, approval of 18th amendment, formation of energy company, initiation of hydel projects at the provincial level are the projects which will benefit people of the province,” he claimed.

PPP’s provincial coordination secretary Syed Ayub Shah said that by holding intra-party elections the annoyed workers would get the opportunity to use their democratic right and chose leaders of their choice.

“In my opinion the party must follow its original democratic plan introduced by the Bhutto family and ensure that particular families will not impose decisions on the workers,” he said.

He said that it was surprising for them that such a large party got only three provincial assembly seats in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, showing even weaker performance than the Jamaat-i-Islami, Qaumi Watan Party and Jamiat Ulema Islam (JUI-F).

Mr Shah said that the provincial president had played effective role to re-activate the workers, but got short time for removal of differences among them.

Ms Nighat Orakzai, spokesperson for the provincial president, said that a meeting of the party would be convened soon to review the post-election situation and reactivate the office-bearers in the province.

“We have reservations about the election process, but keeping in view the larger interests of the country and democracy the party has to accept the results,” she maintained. She said that Anwar Saifullah Khan was still the party’s provincial president.