PESHAWAR: Differences have surfaced within Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) over Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Sohail Afridi’s announcement of a long march to Islamabad on September 27.
Afridi announced the march at a PTI rally in Peshawar on August 5. He said the protest would continue until the party achieved its goals. The announcement, however, caught some PTI leaders by surprise. Several leaders said they had not been informed about the plan before it was made public.
Sources within the party said some members of the party’s KP chapter were not happy with the September 27 date. And that’s why, a hashtag “27 September Long March Na-Manzoor” was also shared on social media.
Provincial Information Minister Shafi Jan rejected the criticism and said the decision was made after consultation with the party’s allies. He said PTI wanted to take its allies along and was also in contact with religious parties.
Jan said the Islamabad march would not be a one-day protest and could continue for several days. He said the party was making preparations for the movement, which would focus on the rights of PTI founder and former prime minister Imran Khan.
He also said PTI planned to hold seminars at universities in Punjab and other provinces to involve young people in the campaign. According to Jan, the movement could attract millions of people.
The minister also invited other opposition parties to join the campaign and urged the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) to leave its constitutional positions and become part of the opposition.
A senior PTI leader, however, said Afridi had a habit of making announcements during political campaigns and discussing them with the party leadership afterwards. The leader said the party had not been consulted about the September 27 march.
PTI Central Information Secretary Sheikh Waqas Akram gave a different explanation. He said Imran Khan had assigned Afridi responsibility for the street movement, giving him the authority to take decisions.
Akram, however, confirmed that neither PTI’s political committee nor its core committee had been consulted about the long march. The disagreement comes just days after PTI held nationwide protests on August 5 to mark three years since Imran Khan’s imprisonment. Another political analyst said that it was not the first time to see differences within the party, however, he said everything would run smoothly.
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