ISLAMABAD: A day after the dissolution of the party’s organisational structure, Prime Minister Imran Khan Saturday revamped the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), appointing Asad Umar as the ruling party’s new secretary general besides provincial presidents.
In a tweet, Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry announced that the premier has appointed Planning Minister Asad Umar as PTI’s secretary general whereas Amir Mehmood Kiyani will take charge as additional secretary general of the party.
Defence Minister Pervaiz Khattak will be heading the PTI in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Ali Zaidi will be its Sindh president, Qasim Suri will head the Balochistan chapter, whereas Shafqat Mehmood and Khusro Bakhtiar will head Punjab and south Punjab chapters of the party.
A day earlier, following a defeat in K-P’s local government elections, PM Imran had abolished the intra-party structures and removed all office holders, including chief organisers.
Read Report on PTI’s defeat in K-P LG polls prepared
He had expressed dissatisfaction over his party’s performance, especially the “nepotism” in the recent local government elections in which it lost several seats.
Fawad had said the premier had formed a 21-member committee, comprising senior leaders of the party, who had been assigned the task of restructuring and formulating a new party constitution.
During the presser, the minister had drawn parallels between the PTI and other opposition parties. “There is no concept of family politics in the PTI as PM Imran Khan has never allowed personal relationships to dominate his mission in his political as well as cricketing careers,” he had said.
“If the culture of the PPP and PML-N comes to the PTI, there will be no difference between them and us.”
‘Mistakes in K-P polls’
After the defeat in the local bodies elections, PM Imran had admitted that the PTI had made ‘mistakes’ in the first phase of the elections and pinned the blame on “wrong candidate selection”.
The premier took to his official Twitter handle to admit that his party had “paid the price” for its mistakes and wrote that he would “personally” be overseeing PTI’s LG election strategy in the second phase of K-P’s local body polls as well as those held across the country.
The premier’s tweet had come in the wake of the ruling PTI suffering a major blow as the JUI-F cruised to victory with its candidate grabbing the pivotal post of the Peshawar mayor in the first phase of the local government elections held in K-P since the merger of tribal districts.
Out of seven tehsils in Peshawar, the PTI could only win council, while the JUI-F and ANP grabbed victory in three and two councils, respectively. In Mardan, the PTI was wiped out while the JUI-F secured victory in three tehsils and the ANP came in first in two tehsils, according to the unofficial results reported at the time.
In all, 12.668 million voters — seven million male and 5.5 million female — were registered for the local government election in the 17 K-P districts namely Buner, Bajaur, Swabi, Peshawar, Nowshera, Kohat, Karak, Dera Ismail Khan, Bannu, Tank, Haripur, Khyber, Mohmand, Mardan, Charsadda, Hangu and Lakki Marwat.
