PESHAWAR: All eyes are now on Khyber Pakhtunkhwa where the decisions taken by Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf chief Imran Khan about resignations of PTI legislators have not only put the government in a difficult situation but have also put to test the loyalty of some of the party’ MNAs.

These legislators are displeased with Imran Khan’s decision and are not willing to quit so soon, just a little over a year, after their election.

“We were not consulted,” one MNA said. “The decision has been taken by the core committee of the party which has little or no stake in the National Assembly.”

Of the PTI’s 34 seats in the National Assembly, 23 are from KP, including four reserved seats.

It is not clear if all or some of those elected on PTI ticket would quit but the party legislator told Dawn that a meeting of the party’s MNAs had decided that their resignation would be contingent upon that of Chief Minister Pervez Khattak, members of his cabinet and the party’s members of the provincial assembly.

“If this happens, well and good, but if they don’t resign, why should we,” he said. “We (the MNAs) will be consulting each other to decide our course of action.”

Many MNAs from the province are not prepared to resign; they want the KP chief minister, members of his cabinet and MPAs to resign first

But the party’s MNAs have been complaining about what they term non-cooperative attitude of the Khattak-led coalition government for quite some time. Now they want to bring down the KP government before deciding to bow out.

“Keeping in view our performance we fear that we won’t be able to win 30 per cent of the seats we had won in the last elections,” the MNA said. “And we have conveyed this to the party leadership.”

And besides a possible dissent by some party MNAs, a likely move to seek dissolution of the KP assembly has sent some PTI legislators and coalition partners in a tizzy.

Chief Minister Khattak has time and again made it clear that he would not dissolve the assembly because he does not see any reason for doing that and also because he doesn’t want to be remembered as a chief minister who dissolved the assembly.

Jamaat-i-Islami and the Pakistan Awami Jamhoori Ittehad, led by the Sawabi-based Taraki brothers, are supporting neither the dissolution of the assembly nor the civil disobedience movement of the PTI. JI’s Minister for Local Government Inayatullah Khan and Jamhoori Ittehad’s Health Minister Shahram Khan Taraki told Dawn that their stand on the two issues was clear. “Neither do we support the civil disobedience movement nor the dissolution of the assembly.”

A leader of another party in the coalition said: “We are in a dilemma. We don’t agree with what Imran Khan says but if we quit, we know what he will do. He will love to go for the dissolution of the assembly.” A PTI leader said: “A time may come when we will have to take the critical decision.”

Meanwhile, the opposition in the provincial assembly planned a meeting on Monday night to discuss requisitioning a session of the assembly to discuss the situation and the possibility of a no-confidence motion against the chief minister.

Opposition leaders claim that many of PTI members of the assembly are panic-stricken. “They are not sure if they could win a seat again,” a senior opposition leader said.

Published in Dawn, August 19th, 2014