PTI leadership ‘turns on itself’ after protest debacle

PTI leadership ‘turns on itself’ after protest debacle

Salman Akram Raja • Raja ‘rebukes’ move by KP lawmakers to nominate Gandapur as interim KP president • Ex-CM fires back, demands apology from secy gen over ‘name-calling’ PESHAWAR: The debacle that befell the PTI’s recent protest march has led to serious fissures within the core committee, with demands emerging from within for chan­ges at the leadership level that can steer the party out of its current crisis. The bad blood became public on Wednesday as two senior party leaders — Secretary General Salman Akram Raja and former KP chief minister Ali Amin Gandapur — traded accusations of betraying the party cause. Meanwhile, a woman parliamentarian from Peshawar echoed the sentiments of many within the core committee when she demanded accountability over the failure of the party’s much-touted protest march, which resulted in the imposition of governor’s rule in KP, and created more problems for their jailed leader, Imran Khan. The Salman Akram-Ali Amin spat on X (formerly Twitter) followed reports that a group of lawmakers from the KP Assembly had met to endorse the latter’s nomination as acting provincial president in place of MNA Junaid Akbar, who has been missing since the imposition of governor’s rule. The handwritten text, addressed to interim party chairman Barrister Gohar Ali Khan and Secretary General Salman Akram Raja and seen by Dawn, said that the meeting “unanimously” proposed to nominate Mr Gandapur as the acting provincial president in the absence of Junaid Akbar, calling the ex-CM “the right man for the right job”. The Oct 14 meeting, which according to one participant was held via Zoom and WhatsApp, was attended by around 55 provincial lawmakers. Their four-pronged agenda included party organisation issues; the status of negotiations with the government; the party’s plan for further protests; and legal issues. The main outcome that invited derision from Mr Raja, however, was the resolution demanding that Mr Gandapur be appointed the acting provincial president immediately. This prompted the secretary general to take a dig at “the narrative” regarding a possible announcement by a group of party MPAs, nominating a new provincial president without permission from their jailed leader Imran Khan, or the party’s political committee. He put the number of these dissidents at 68. Ali Amin Gandapur The secretary general accused the group of cutting off contact with Sohail Afridi and his team in the final days of the protest march, paving the way for state coercion, emergency and governor’s rule in the province. He asserted that Ali Asghar, the party’s provincial general secretary, remained the acting provincial head and Mr Afridi continued to be the chief minister, in accordance with the law and Constitution. “Those spreading doubts — the snakes and the serpents — will be defeated,” he wrote while concluding his post on X. Subsequently, an angry Mr Gandapur took to X to hit back at the secretary general’s claims; in a series of tweets and audio messages, he took strong exception to Mr Raja’s tone and tenor. Demanding that he bring to an end “the spectacle” that had been made of the party, the former KP CM said that the secretary general had no right to accuse others of conspiracy, or call them names like “snakes and serpents”. “Do you understand this? We know how to make others understand if they don’t get this,” he said in an angry tone. Accusing Mr Raja of “hiding” during the party’s protest movement, he asked what sacrifices he had rendered for the party, and demanded the secretary general apologise for his remarks. “At a time when the party is facing unprecedented political challenges, levelling vague accusations and using mocking language against your own elected representatives does not befit responsible leadership,” he wrote on X. “I don’t know who has fed Salman Akram Raja and what the purpose of his tweet was”, Mr Gandapur continued. He also wondered why Mr Raja and Barrister Gohar did not attend parliamentary party meetings, despite repeated invitations to discuss the fallout of the decisions they had taken, which had brought the party to this juncture. “If the parliamentary party of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa wants to seek a constitutional and political solution to the current crisis through consultation within itself, who has given a few individuals the authority to label these elected representatives as traitors, conspirators, or undemocratic?” Incidentally, this is not the first time that both men have taken to social media to air their internal party grievances. In 2025, ahead of a nationwide protest, Mr Gandapur and then-PTI Punjab organiser Aliya Hamza Malik had become embroiled in a similar argument over social media. At the time, the argument had prompted a censure from the jailed party founder, who had strictly instructed senior officeholders and junior members alike to avoid expressing “internal differences on social media, electronic media, print media, or any other platform”. “Publicly airing internal matters or individual concerns before the media is entirely unacceptable,” Imran Khan had said at the time. The latest exchange between the two party leaders also harkened to an outburst from MPA Mashal Yousafzai — former spokesperson to Bushra Bibi — who has blamed the former chief minister and a few other party leaders for the failure of the protest march and subsequent imposition of governor’s rule. Published in Dawn, October 22nd, 2026