RAWALPINDI: The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) has started chalking out a plan for the upcoming local government elections in Punjab to avoid the defeat it faced in the recent cantonment board elections.

A senior PTI leader told Dawn that the party took the defeat in the cantonment elections seriously and had started work on devising a plan for the local government polls in Punjab.

“Shah Mehmood Qureshi has invited all the members of the provincial assembly to Lahore on Monday (today) to discuss and take the LG polls as a challenge and defeat the ruling PML-N.”

He said all the MPAs of the party had been asked to come up with their suggestions to improve the image of the PTI in the province, its base camp.

A number of senior workers, he added, had refused to attend the meeting unless action was taken against those who did not allot party tickets to appropriate candidates in the cantonment elections.

The party took the cantonment elections lightly and the ruling PML-N cashed in on the situation and managed to win majority seats in Punjab. “In the constituency of Imran Khan in Rawalpindi, the PTI also lost all the 20 seats in the cantonment elections,” he said.

Party’s lawmakers meeting today to discuss a strategy to give tough time to ruling party in local govt elections in Punjab

Another senior PTI leader added that the party faced defeat in the cantonment elections due to non-serious attitude of its central leaders. “Instead of appointing senior leaders to supervise the process of awarding tickets, the local party leaders were given the task without a proper guidance,” he said.

There are many senior leaders in the province who contested the local government elections during the Musharraf era, including Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Raja Tariq Kiayani, Mian Naeem. “These political leaders would have given better suggestions to the party for the cantonment areas.”

He said at present the party affairs were being run by inefficient people who ignored those who managed to win the elections in the past. Due to this, he added, the party was divided in groups.

When contacted, PTI MPA Arif Abbasi said the party would devise a better plan for the upcoming local government elections in Punjab and for this a meeting would be held in Lahore on Monday.

He said all the 30 PTI members of Punjab Assembly would attend the conference and give their input. Most of the workers expressed no-confidence in the office-bearers who run the election campaign for the cantonment board elections.

He said senior party leaders had also been invited to the meeting, adding the performance of the party would improve in the upcoming elections as it had learned many lessons from the cantonment board elections.

Published in Dawn, May 25th, 2015

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