PESHAWAR: Pakistan Peoples Party is lagging behind the other political parties in the process of reorganisation in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and seems to lose ground to them in future elections in case it failed to quickly set its priorities right in the province.

After several experiments to change its provincial presidents, including Barrister Masood Kausar, Rahimdad Khan, Syed Zahir Ali Shah, Sardar Ali Khan, Anwar Saifullah Khan and Khan Zada Khan, the party has presently dissolved the entire provincial cabinet and formed a five-member committee to work for reorganisation.

PPP has no provincial cabinet for the past about two months and it is run through the organising committee. The committee was announced at the time of dissolution of the provincial organisation (cabinet) by chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari about two months ago.

The committee is headed by Rahimdad Khan, while its members include Senator Rubina Khalid, Engineer Humayun Khan, Noor Alam Khan and Shuja Khan. The duty assigned to them is to resolve the differences among different groups at the district and divisional levels in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa so as to develop consensus for naming office-bearers at different levels.

Rahimdad Khan says intra-party elections do not suit the party at this juncture

Party insiders said that the committee members had so far met various rival groups in Dera Ismail Khan and Bannu, but the process was halted for one month due to Ramazan.

Sources said that the delay in reorganisation was also causing the party a big loss as workers had no option for contacts in case of different problems and in a state of compulsion they had to request leaders of other political parties. They said that the committee had succeeded to bring different groups closer in Dera Ismail Khan.

A source revealed that keeping in view the political situation some committee members wanted the party leadership to cut short the reorganisation process and announce names of the office-bearers. In this connection a meeting of the committee members was also held with Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on Wednesday and discussed with him the progress they made so far.

“Bilawal asked the committee to continue taking workers on board so as to get their opinion for naming new office-bearers,” a source said.

However, the committee chairman, Rahimdad Khan, when contacted, said that one month break was a compulsion due to by-polls on PK-8 Peshawar and then Ramazan.

He said that soon after Eidul Fitr the process would be resumed to submit final report to the party chairman.

He admitted that the cabinet was dissolved, but said the five-member committee was there to intervene in case of emergency. He claimed that most of the annoyed activists had agreed to help in strengthening of the party and now the groupings would come to an end.

“Intra-party elections do not suit us these days as further groupings will come into existence. If the general elections are held after one year then control on groupings will be very difficult,” Rahimdad Khan said and added that Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf had also postponed its intra-party polls to control internal rifts.

When contacted, another senior provincial leader Syed Ayub Shah suggested that the process of reorganisation needed to be expedited. “We have no objection if provincial president is named through consensus, but he must be basic, ideological worker of PPP so that workers would not face problems in accessing and contacting him in routine,” he said.

Mr Shah said that a person having wealth, fame and sincerity could run the party affairs otherwise PPP workers would not accept an arrogant, wealthy person as their president.

Several other activists said that the new provincial president would be from Malakand division as former presidents belonged to other divisions. The sources said that the annoyed leaders were also likely to share their opinion soon with the organising committee for next provincial president.

Published in Dawn, June 24th, 2016