RAWALPINDI: Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif may have resumed his rally from Rawalpindi on Thursday, but his short stay in the city and subsequent departure exposed divisions and a lack of coordination within the ruling party’s local chapter.

The rally left the garrison city in the afternoon. Before it left, the rally waited in front of the district courts for an hour, in the hope of swelling its numbers. But the wait was in vain; having finally left at 1:15pm, the convoy decided to skip stopovers in Rawat and Gujar Khan.

Most people who had come from other cities and the outskirts of Rawalpindi and Islamabad stayed in private hotels or went back to home, since there were no arrangements made for their stay by the local party leaders and rally organizers.

Convoy waited in vain for numbers to swell before leaving for Jhelum; stopovers in Rawat, Gujar Khan skipped

“It is difficult to bring people back in the morning after they go home late at night,” said a party leader while talking to Dawn.

Explaining why the rally had to rush past Rawat and Gujar Khan, he said that party workers in Sohawa and Jhelum were getting impatient. He said that party leaders were of the view that after hearing about the start of the rally, the workers would reach immediately.

A senior party leader of PML-N told Dawn there were three main reasons for the unimpressive show on Thursday. “The PML-N in Rawalpindi is a divided house and failed to mobilise people,” he said. The party’s local leadership is divided into three groups that are not willing to coordinate with each other.

The party leader, who did not want to be named, said that Hanif Abbasi and Senator Chaudhry Tanveer were vying with each other for the party ticket for NA-56. The latter, it is said, wants the ticket for his son, Chaudhry Daniyal.

According to the PML-N leader, Mr Abbasi is leading a group that includes Malik Shakil Awan and Ziaullah Shah.

He said that the responsibility of arrangements for the rally lay with local leaders, including Hanif Abbasi, and they assigned the task of bringing in supporters to union council (UC) chairmen in their constituency. However, he said that some UC chairmen were close to other group and they did not bring large rallies.

In addition, a lack of coordination and advance planning also contributed to the low turnout on Thursday morning, when Mr Sharif resumed his journey.

The party leader Dawn spoke to claimed that the rally lost momentum when, on Wednesday night, the former PM abruptly changed his plan and decided to stay the night in the garrison city.

“On Wednesday, the procession moved slowly because the party leadership kept waiting for more people to gather. Senior party leaders, including Hanif Abbasi and Rawalpindi Mayor Sardar Nasim spent the day travelling up and down Murree Road to review the situation and kept calling on UC chairmen to reach Murree Road with their supporters and party workers.”

The party leader said that the gathering at Committee Chowk swelled with the arrival of these smaller groups. However, local leaders who were on the stage did not invite any UC chairman or vice chairman onto the stage, which was why the latter skipped out on Thursday morning, taking the wind out of the rally’s sails.

“On Wednesday, the rally entered the city quite late. By then, the workers had been waiting for hours without food and water,” he said. He claimed that workers came out to see Nawaz Sharif, but very few arrangements had been made for them in the camps established along the road.

“The women’s wing failed to bring anyone to the rally, as they had not been consulted when arrangements were being made,” the party leader said.

He also said workers were annoyed with local leaders, who did not address their issues despite dominating the Cantonment board, the municipal corporation and the Punjab government. “Local leaders failed to pay attention to their workers over the past four years,” he said.

Another reason was the tight security arrangements made by police, which hampered the movement of the people.

But not everyone agrees with this assessment. Political observers are of the view that PML-N workers, unlike PPP, PTI and Jamaat-i-Islami supporters, tend to stay away from street shows and instead focus on their work. On Thursday, the traders – traditional supporters of the party – did not close shop to attend the rally; this was their way of signaling that they were not happy with Hanif Abbasi, Malik Shakil Awan and others.

PML-N Metropolitan President Sardar Naseem, who is also Rawalpindi’s mayor, said that Mr Sharif’s planned speech at Rawat and Gujar Khan and their scheduled stay was changed due to security reasons. He did not agree with the assertion that the rally turnout was unimpressive.

Published in Dawn, August 11th, 2017