RAWALPINDI: Only a day is left for the political parties to nominate their party ticket holders among the candidates who are contesting the cantonment board elections in the garrison city, but the PTI and PPP are holding back their decisions till the last moment.

Insiders suggested on Monday that rivalries within their ranks and watching each other’s tactical moves are making their choices uncertain.

Need for declaring the party affiliation of the candidates fighting the election in 20 wards of the Rawalpindi and Chaklala cantonments arose after the Lahore High Court, on March 30, rejected the party-less election ordered by the government and directed the Election Commission of Pakistan to hold them on party basis.

The ruling PML-N and the opposition Jamaat-i-Islami have already nominated their candidates.

Although a 13-member PTI committee completed interviewing the candidates desiring its ticket on April 3, it did not announce its choices.

PTI MPA Arif Abbasi who is also member of candidate selection committee admitted that the committee had not met since.

When contacted, PTI Punjab North Secretary General Zahid Kazmi said that the PTI Core Committee decided that the party’s tehsil organisation would announce the candidates and the district organisation would hear the appeals against the decision.

But he conceded that “some issues are to be settled first within the party.”

A senior PTI leader told Dawn on the condition of anonymity that a tussle between two groups in the local PTI, led by Sadaqaat Abbasi and Ghulam Sarwar Khan, that their candidates be awarded party tickets in five wards prevented the committee from reaching a decision.

PTI candidates chosen for the remaining 15 wards were told to launch their campaigns. They are Malik Zia Kausar, Abdul Majeed, Malik Sabir, Malik Abid Tahir Abbas, Abdul Aziz, Tahleel Ahmed and Malik Abdul Kareem in Rawalpindi Cantonment Board (RCB), and Adnan Ahmed, Malik Pervaiz, Sajjad Akhter, Ajmeer Khan, Khalid Jadoon, Ch. Nauman, Khateebur Rehman and Zeeshan Mumtaz in Chaklala Cantonment Board (CCB).

Candidates for Wards 1 and 10 of RCB, and Wards 3 and 5 of CCB could not be decided because of the infighting between the two groups. PTI has to nominate a new candidate for Ward 4 of RCB, because Malik Sabir supposed to be the choice of the party was disqualified by the returning officer.

On the other hand, the PPP City chapter met on Monday to finalise the party tickets but PPP City president Amir Fida Paracha would not announce the chosen party candidates. He said PPP leader for the cantonments, Zamrud Khan, would announce their names on his return from a trip to Karachi.

However, according to a senior local party leader, the PPP was waiting for the PTI to announce its candidates, because “it wants to accommodate the aspirants who fail to get PTI tickets”.

“Local PPP leaders had received strong signals from some PTI candidates that they would turn to PPP for the ticket if the PTI rejected them,” he said.

Though the PPP has yet to ‘finalise’ its candidates in 15 wards, he said, Mohammad Shahid, Iqbal Khattak, Shafique Jadoon, Asad Rauf and Raja Shaukat “can be sure” to get the party ticket.

According to him, despite being in-charge of the party affairs in the cantonments, the seasoned leader Zamarud Khan did not attend the meetings on election strategy. “Zamarud wanted the party to keep the Ward 1 field open for his nominee to contest as independent. But other leaders did not agree with him that putting up an independent would win more sympathy votes to the PPP’s gain,” he said.

Published in Dawn April 7th, 2015

On a mobile phone? Get the Dawn Mobile App: Apple Store | Google Play