Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) has for many years been Imran Khan’s, and his party Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI)’s stronghold. This is why PTI’s defeat in the first phase of the local government elections in KPK is such a setback for the party. This shock seems to have registered with the party, as it has conceded defeat and appears to be taking difficult steps to understand what went wrong. Indeed, in a highly contested move, Prime Minister Imran Khan has decided to dissolve all PTI organisations across the country. The Prime Minister has also demanded explanations from the KPK government, which has reportedly submitted a detailed report to PM Khan on the poor performance of the ruling PTI candidates in the 17 districts of the province. It is appreciable that the PTI has accepted defeat and the Prime Minister is reflecting within the party, rather than the usual political route of alleging rigging and unfair play. However, the decision to dismantle and reorganise all PTI organisations across the country has, as expected, not fared well by various political workers, who feel like the wrong people are being scapegoated.
While it is true that a poor selection of candidates and a selection process not based on merit causes severe damage to a party’s electoral performance, a host of other factors also come into play, including bad policies, poor governance, rampant corruption and organisational fissures. It is also true that PTI underestimated the opposition in KP, as we saw Maulana Fazlur Rehman perform much better than expected and pose a credible threat to PTI’s popularity.
With this abysmal defeat, an even more formidable challenge for PTI will be Punjab local government elections. If the Prime Minister is serious about reorganising the party and learning the mistakes of the KPK elections, he will look at the situation from a macro-level, rather than just blaming the defeat on smaller players.
