Not a single PTI leader, central or provincial, has so far joined workers at the protest camps set up in four districts, including Peshawar. The protest that entered ninth day on Monday has blocked a key ground supply line to Nato forces in Afghanistan.
The blockade has great national and international significance, but the PTI leaders have chosen not to join it, giving no reason for their continued absence from the protest.
The workers are left to handle such a significant protest, which points to a lack of commitment by the PTI leaders, particularly Imran Khan, who launched the campaign with great pomp and show on November 23. After the Peshawar rally that launched the campaign to block supplies for Nato troops in Afghanistan, Imran Khan did not come to Peshawar or join the sit-in in any district. Other central leaders too have stayed away from the protest.
Most provincial leaders, if not all, are part of the government and cannot participate in the protest as the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has distanced itself from the blockade of Nato supplies. This again underlines the importance of separation of government and party offices. Currently, most of the PTI leaders simultaneously occupy the party and government offices, a fact that often makes them the subject of criticism.
PTI provincial president Asad Qaiser is speaker of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly and general secretary Shaukat Yousafzai is a cabinet member. Thus, the provincial leadership’s participation in the sit-ins is almost impossible
The central leadership has also no plans to sit in these protest camps this week, according to PTI’s provincial information secretary Ishtiaq Urmar. “The central leaders do take interest in the sit-ins. Imran Khan sometimes asks me through messages and I inform him,” he said. “But none of the central leaders has plans to participate in the sit-in this week,” he added.
He said most of the provincial leaders were cabinet members and the provincial government had yet not taken any decision to join the protest.
The leaders’ failure to join the sit-ins with workers is diminishing their importance. Media is losing interest in it and workers are becoming less enthusiastic. They don’t come to the camp at the Ring Road before 10am, allowing an opportunity to Nato trucks to have more than half of the day to pass through Peshawar. At night, workers abandon the camp.
The PTI and Jamaat-e-Islami workers continued to stop trucks and check their shipment documents on Monday to find Nato containers for the ninth straight day. They forced a container-laden truck to turn back as it was allegedly taking goods for Nato troops.
“The sit-in’s importance is not diminishing,” said Younas Zaheer, general secretary of the PTI Peshawar chapter. “We are not inviting leaders because they attract a huge crowd which we can hardly handle,” he argued.
A PTI worker Malik Tahir Raees and former provincial minister of the Jamaat-e-Islami Kashif Azam were Monday booked on the charge of breaking seal of a container. However, they were not arrested.
Younas Zaheer said he had set 12pm Tuesday as deadline for the police to quash the first information report against the two workers or else the protesters would close the Ring Road to traffic.