A senior vice president of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (Pakistan Movement for Justice, PTI) has quit the party while its secretary general has also stepped down from his role, marking another blow to the embattled ex-Prime Minister Imran Khan.
Fawad Chaudhry, the senior vice president and a former federal minister, tweeted on Wednesday that he was “parting ways” with Khan and the party.
Later on Wednesday, Khan’s close confidant Asad Umar, soon after his release from Rawalpindi’s Adiala jail, announced his resignation from all party positions, except for its primary membership.
Among others, Nadia Sher Khan, a former PTI lawmaker from Imran Khan’s home state of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, announced that she was resigning from the party.
A lot of PTI’s leadership is already in jail, and it is increasingly difficult to find anyone to speak for the party. Mr Khan says that these are ‘forced divorces’. It’s easy for him to talk. He has been doing his best to avoid arrest, while such figures as Dr Mazari were repeatedly arrested by the MPO, released on bail, only to be arrested again.
Mr Khan clearly had not prepared his party for something that no one has done successfully in the past: rise up against the establishment and succeed.
It is also worth noting that while these departures may include forced divorces, a lot had entered the party as a result of ‘forced marriages’. At that time, Mr Khan expressed no objection to Inducting people in his party who were being directed by the establishment to join.
In the battle of ‘red lines’, the establishment seems to be winning at the moment. If the party’s red line is Mr Khan, the establishment’s are the symbols of its strength. Mr Khan is stuck, because the May 9 incidents have not left him with a party, and he may have realized too late that the May 9 incidents will not be pushed behind him so simply.
He knows very well that no party has come to power without establishment approval. According to his opponents, no one would know better than him, who was given all its electables and its other help in the 2018 elections, and its help moving forward, whether it was a majority for a budget or against a vocal opponent.
Where does Mr Khan go from here? More importantly, where does he take his party? He has a difficult task ahead of him, that of somehow rubbing out the red line his supporters crossed on May 9, and winning back the support he lost. The point is now now to win the next election, as that is likely to be a bridge too far. Now the purpose is to remain in politics until a situations time arises where all can be forgotten, if not forgotten.
