Do Prime Minister Imran Khan and KP Chief Minister Mehmood Khan really feel that the debacle in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa local body elections was solely because of the wrong selection of candidates, and had nothing to do with the way the PTI is running the country and the province? The meeting, the first since the PTI got a drubbing in the polls earlier in the week, must haven a tense one, but it is interesting that neither man spoke about inflation or economic handling. The effectiveness of the provincial government should have been brought under scrutiny, but was not. It would have been valid to ask why a party which had become the first to win a second successive term three years before, had bombed so badly in the local body elections. True, local body polls the world over are used by voters to send signals to the government, but if so, the message from KP was not a good one for any government to have to hear.
Besides, neither seemed to be interested in how nepotism had crept into the KP PTI. Was it the fault of Mahmood Khan’s government? Or was there a more pervasive problem infecting the party in other provinces? MrKhan’s decision to vet the election of candidates himself in Punjab may speak more of his courage than his good sense, for while there may be some improvement in candidate selection, it provides an easy way out for Punjab Chief Minister Usman Buzdar, and also makes Mr Khan responsible for the Punjab results in a way that he might not like.
Perhaps Mr Khan’s main problem is that he is not in a position to punish anyone. The PTI MNAs who have violated party discipline by supporting candidates other than the PTI’s cannot be acted against, because Mr Khan’s majority is so narrow. Mr Khan should be aware that how he handles this indiscipline will be watched carefully in Punjab by both MNAs and MPAs, aware of the narrowness of the ruling majorities, especially by those ‘electables’ who saw the light in the run-up to the election. If there is no adroit coure correction, if the PTI cannot find candidates who can explain away the crumbling economy, it might come a cropper in Punjab, as big or worse than KP.
