PESHAWAR/MANSEHRA: Following the emergence of a dissident group of lawmakers within the ruling PTI, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly Speaker Babar Saleem Swati seems reluctant to hold an assembly session, apparently fearing criticism against the provincial government by the party’s own MPAs over the question of Imran Khan’s continued imprisonment.
Reports of rifts within the PTI emerged soon after the induction of new ministers, advisers and special assistants – who took oath on May 22. It is understood that some of the MPAs in question are unhappy after not being included in the provincial cabinet.
The last sitting of the KP Assembly was held on May 18, which was adjourned by the chair till June 1. However, the house did not meet on the scheduled date, as the speaker first postponed it to June 8.
The latest notification issued by the assembly secretariat on Sunday said that the sitting would now be held on Monday, June 15 at 2pm.
One of the dissidents told Dawn that there were initially 25 of them, but the number had now risen to 30 over the past couple of days.
The lawmaker was unwilling to name them, as that would expose them to pressure from the party and the chief minister to withdraw from their stance. “The four to five dissident lawmakers who can tolerate the pressure are known to everyone,” he said.
MPA Mushtaq Ahmed Ghani, who is also among the dissidents, told Dawn that they have their own grievances and political stance, which would be presented on the floor of the house.
He said that during a recent meeting, he had informed Speaker Swati that they were not a dissident group; they wanted a clear-cut announcement by the chief minister on plans for Imran Khan’s release.
“We don’t need any incentives; our one-point agenda is the decisive movement for the release of Imran Khan,” Ghani told Dawn.
He said that their other demands included arranging a meeting of party leaders and relatives with Imran Khan, providing him medical treatment through doctors of his choice at Shifa International Hospital, and expediting the court proceedings of his cases.
Ghani noted that sporadic protesters outside Adiala Jail had proven to be ineffective, adding that they wanted to move towards “a permanent sit-in that continues until a logical conclusion”.
When asked whether former chief minister Ali Amin Gandapur was leading the dissidents, he said that there was no one person leading the group; the lawmakers had come together on a single-point agenda, i.e., securing the release of the party’s founder.
Another dissident legislator told Dawn on condition of anonymity that Chief Minister Sohail Afridi was perturbed by the rise of the dissident group.
“The chief minister is trying to make the dissidents happy by including their development schemes in the Annual Development Program,” he claimed.
When contacted, Speaker Babar Saleem Swati told Dawn that the assembly session would be convened after presentation of the federal budget in the National Assembly.
However, it is worth noting that the KP Assembly has been in session for the last couple of months.
On June 1, when the chief minister convened a parliamentary party meeting, only 57 out of the 92 lawmakers attended the meeting.
This was where many MPAs complained to CM Afridi about corruption in government departments, poor law and order in the province and indifference to police, district administration and bureaucracy to their legitimate demands related to people’s issues.
The next day, a group of dissidents wrote to interim party chairman Barrister Gohar Ali Khan, expressing concern over the “lack of efforts” by the leadership to secure Imran Khan’s release.
Efforts to win dissidents over
In the interim, the KP speaker and other party leaders are engaged in hectic politicking in a bid to win over the dissident lawmakers.
Speaker Swati recently met with Ghani to defuse tensions, the latter told journalists in Mansehra.
“Swati was here to defuse tensions with our group. We made it clear to him that we do not have any personal vendetta against the chief minister or any other in the government and firmly stand with PTI founding chairman Imran Khan,” Ghani said.
One of the group’s leaders, privy to the meeting between Swati and Ghani, claimed that the former had offered the latter the position of senior provincial minister in the cabinet, which Ghani had declined.
Ghani said that more than 30 MPAs were active members of their group. “We, all like-minded MPAs, whose number exceeds 30, have made it clear to the chief minister that if he stages a sit-in outside the National Assembly on June 10, we all will not return until the desired results are achieved,” he said.
He said that if the government presented the budget in the assembly without a prior meeting between CM Afridi and Imran Khan, the group would boycott proceedings and would not help in its passage.
