LAHORE: Advocate Hamid Khan, one of the founders and core committee member of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI), has announced launching a campaign for implementation of the intra-party election tribunal’s decisions that call for ouster of “opportunists and corrupt politicians.”

The PTI’s Insaf Markaz announced supporting and carrying forward the campaign.

Referring to the politicians in the party who allegedly bought votes in the intra-party election as cancer, Mr Khan said they must be ousted from the party for its betterment and growth. He said the party’s election tribunal headed by Justice Wajihuddin Ahmed (retired) had recommended that Jahangir Tareen (party’s central organiser), Pervaiz Khattak (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chief minister), former Lahore district president Abdul Aleem Khan and former Sindh president Nadir Leghari be removed from the party “for buying votes in the intra-party elections.”

The PTI’s Standing Committee on Accountability and Discipline (SCAD) had also recently decided on complaints that party’s provincial assembly ticket-holders Shoaib Siddiqui and Hafiz Farhat be removed from the party on the charges of “selling” party tickets in the Lahore Cantonment Board elections.

“Conventional (corrupt) politicians and the PTI cannot go hand in hand,” said Mr Khan while addressing a meeting of party workers called by Insaf Markaz here on Saturday. He said Justice Wajihuddin had also asserted that there would be no compromise on the implementation of the tribunal’s decisions.

Acknowledging party workers’ complaints, he rejected the organising committees that were ignoring party’s genuine and loyal workers and promoting so-called electables. He lauded the good intentions of PTI Punjab organiser Chaudhry Sarwar.

He asked the workers to discuss and prepare their lists of candidates for organising committees and assured them that he would himself take those lists to party chairman Imran Khan for inclusion in respective committees.

Mr Khan said the party workers were united on ideology and under the leadership of Imran Khan but would continue to campaign against those creating rifts within the party and distancing chairman from his genuine workers. He said his objection was against those who were with dictator Gen Pervez Musharraf and joined the PTI afterwards.

Hamid Khan said the Judicial Commission’s decision had come as a setback for the party. He said the party and chairman Imran Khan had lodged valid complaints of rigging but its legal team failed to prove massive rigging.

He assured the party workers that next intra-party elections after local polls would be held on a direct voting basis.

Published in Dawn, August 2nd, 2015

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