IT is clear that there is some bad blood within the PTI’s ranks. Ever since the PTI lost a key battle over reserved seats in the Peshawar High Court — seats which it believes should have accrued to it, but were handed to its rivals by the ECP — several PTI leaders have been blaming their leadership’s decision to merge with the Sunni Ittehad Council for complicating its legal position. The sudden heat seems to have greatly upset SIC chief Sahibzada Hamid Raza, who has warned that disunity within the ranks will only increase Imran Khan’s suffering. “Party discipline will also be compromised, and our attention will be diverted from Imran Khan’s cases,” he warned during a recent TV interview, reminding the PTI that the decision to merge was necessary to keep the party’s lawmakers together. It is unlikely, however, that his ‘warning’ will be enough to sober up the PTI support base, enamoured as it is of conspiracy theories. Some camps on social media are already accusing this leader or that of being an ‘establishment plant’ who has infiltrated the PTI ranks to wreak chaos from within.

Where party discipline is concerned, the PTI does not seem to have learnt much from the past. Of course, much of its current predicament is due to Mr Khan’s incarceration and the state’s continuous efforts to keep him as inaccessible to his party’s leadership as possible. However, the party, given its circumstances, should have by now devised a means to keep discipline and maintain order within its ranks. Instead, its leaders have continued to issue conflicting statements, in the process confusing PTI supporters on where the party stands on key issues and creating doubts in their heads about their true intentions. If the PTI wishes to function smoothly while its top leadership is incapacitated, it needs a tiered governance structure that can ensure unity in the face of adversity. Otherwise, it will continue to lose ground to forces that wish to weaken it and neutralise the gains it made following the Feb 8 election. The PTI also needs to consider how long it can afford to let its supporters act like an unruly mob. Indiscipline has always been the PTI’s Achilles heel, and it appears that its detractors are now trying to capitalise on it to keep it contained.

Published in Dawn, March 19th, 2024