The patently thinkable has happened. Hot on the heels of the Istehkaam-e-Pakistan Party, another political party has been formed, this time in the PTI’s stronghold, Khyber Paskhtunkhwa. The name: PTI-Parliamentarians. Since it’s the same playbook, from ‘02, might as well have named it PTI-Patriots.
The new party includes some pretty heavy hitters, including the party’s two chief ministers for the province. There are two reasons why this is a particularly bad look for the PTI. One, the party had taken to boast that it had performed very well, on the governance front; if both the captains of that ship have jumped, well, ship, what does the party say now against those two? Second – and this is as devastating – there seems to have been no great pressure on these two, specially Mehmood Khan. The powers that be, seemed to have cut through the party’s ties like a hot knife through butter.
They claim that they have 57 legislators that have jumped ship, which is quite a haul. One doesn’t know, however, how much they will be able get and dent, electorally, the PTI, which remains hugely popular in the province.
This episode is just another sad reminder that the more things change, the more they stay the same in our hapless republic. The engineering corps, whatever they may or may not be able to do on the battlefield, they can carve out political parties at will. But, as engineering corps around the world know, it is tricky to deal with the minefields that they themselves have laid in the past.
