PESHAWAR: Pakistan Peoples Party has succeeded to woo its disgruntled workers and leaders in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa after three years with replacement of its provincial president.

Many of the annoyed leaders are likely to be assigned important responsibilities on key seats during the reorganisation process to be launched soon, according to insiders.

The newly-appointed PPP provincial president Najamuddin Khan formally launched his visits to different areas of the province on Sunday to mobilise the inactivate workers and prepare them for taking part in strengthening the party’s organisational units in their respective areas. He was notified as provincial president of PPP on August 13.

Mr Khan was warmly received by the workers at different intersections of motorway when he was coming from Islamabad to Peshawar after becoming provincial president of PPP. He was brought in a procession to his residence in Hayatabad.

New provincial president devising plan for party’s reorganisation

He claimed to have succeeded in bringing back all the disgruntled leaders including former federal minister Lal Mohammad Khan, former provincial presidents Syed Zahir Ali Shah and president Rahimdad Khan, former provincial minister Ziaullah Khan Afridi, former Peshawar district general secretary Misbahuddin Khan, former MPA Mohammad Ali Shah Bacha, Qasim Qasab and many others who had clearly declined to work under the leadership of former provincial president Mohammad Humayun Khan.

“This is the time we have to join hands with sincerity to reorganise the party at grassroots level in all districts. We have to compete the rival political parties in the upcoming elections and there is no room for negligence any longer,” he told the workers while addressing at Swabi, Mardan, Charsadda, Peshawar intersections of motorway and in Peshawar city.

A number of disgruntled PPP leaders including Rahimdad Khan, Lal Mohammad Khan, Ziaullah Afridi, Misbahuddin Khan told this scribe that they had no personal enmity with the former provincial president but their demand for his replacement was just to save the party from further destruction in the province.

They expressed the hope that Najamuddin Khan would take on board his cabinet members during important decisions instead of opting for solo flight. They said that PPP had sincere workers but they were not ready to compromise on their ego. “We hope the workers will get respect now,” they added.

Some other senior workers of PPP, pleading anonymity, said that the party leadership should dissolve all the organisational units to enable the workers to elect their office-bearers with free will. They said that nomination of office-bearers was in violation of the party’s constitution.

“We believe that PPP is a democratic party but the direct appointments of office-bearers clearly contradict the tall claim,” they said and added that only ideological workers should be given the opportunity to lead the party.

They said that many of the sitting members of provincial cabinet were quite new and did not know about the party’s constitution.

They suggested replacement of the people on the key seats to run the party in the province.

PPP provincial senior vice-president Syed Ayub Shah said that leadership should implement the party manifesto in letter and spirit.

He said that leaders should follow the party’s plan instead of getting key seats for making money through unfair means to compete with the rest of political parties.

“The new president will certainly have a plan to strengthen the party on solid basis,” Lal Khan said and asked the workers to extend support to him in the reorganisation process.

“We were pushed to the wall during the past three years but we did not part ways with PPP and adopted a wait and see policy,” Misbah said and expressed the hope that all annoyed works would come back to work actively.

The provincial president also held meetings with senior leaders at his residence to devise a plan for reorganization of the party.

Published in Dawn, August 23rd, 2021