There have been concerns about political engineering and not having a level playing field, but the PTI is ready to give party tickets to qualified candidates for the general elections that have been set for February 8, 2020.
Because the PTI doesn’t want to lose candidates like the PML-N did before the 2018 elections, most of the tickets will go to lawyers this time. This is because lawyers have been with the party through hard times and can handle any legal issues that may come up before the election.
PTI officials said that the party’s founder, Imran Khan, would choose the candidates, and then the newly elected PTI head, Barrister Gohar Khan, would announce their names. This was said despite the fact that Khan was being pushed down and involved in legal cases.
“The last steps are being taken to choose the party’s candidates,” PTI leader Shoaib Shaheen told The Express Tribune.
He also said that the core group of the party was looking into it and talking to possible candidates.
Shaheen, a key member of the PTI’s legal team, said that the party would give tickets to candidates all over the country. He said it would not be hard to fill the seats left open by people who left the party after Imran’s arrest on May 9 of this year because of the violence.
After May 9, when its angry activists and followers are said to have attacked key military installations, the PTI got into a lot of trouble and was subject to a huge crackdown.
The army made May 9 a “black day,” and its media wing said that “this group wearing a political cloak” had done in its “lust” for power what the country’s enemies had not been able to do in 75 years.
Recently, caretaker Prime Minister Anwaarul Haq Kakar said that the government would try to give all political groups an equal chance to win.
He did say, though, that people who thought that recent events would be ignored and that “arsonists” would be treated like other politicians were wrong. This was a clear reference to the PTI.
Shaheen said that the PTI had plenty of people who wanted to join. He went on to say that the names of the PTI candidates would be made public in the next few days.
He also said that it was likely that the names would be out by the time the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) released the polling date.
Many legal experts would be running for office on the PTI’s ticket, but Shaheen said that the electables could not be totally ruled out.
He said that the tickets would be given to people who could be elected, party members of all ages, and people who helped the PTI when it needed it the most.
Someone else in the PTI who didn’t want to be named said that things would move faster once the party got back its famous election symbol, the “cricket bat,” from the ECP.
The ECP told the PTI that if it didn’t hold its internal elections by December 13, it would lose its electoral symbol, the cricket bat. The PTI held its internal elections and chose a new founding head.
The PTI said at first that it would challenge the commission’s ruling in the right place, but then changed its mind.
The PTI then held its own polls within the party on December 2 to meet the ECP’s requirements and sent its report to the election body so it could keep its symbol.
When the ECP made its decision on November 23, the PTI seemed to be losing the bat, which used to show Imran’s populist beliefs in good government and his promise, among other things, to get rid of corruption within 90 days.
But the PTI is now hoping that it will be able to keep its election symbol and use it in the next general election.
Akbar S. Babar, a founder member of the PTI, may decide to challenge the PTI’s internal polls before the ECP, which would be the only other problem.
The leader of the PTI confirmed that the process of screening candidates was already underway and said that the party would quickly hand out tickets as soon as the ECP said it could keep its election symbol.
Besides the well-known PTI leaders who were still there, he agreed that lawyers should get more tickets. He said that Imran had even picked a lawyer to be party head while he was in jail on multiple charges and might not be released for a while.
As the country gets closer to the general elections on February 8, concerns about political engineering have grown. The PTI leaders’ scripted interviews, re-arrests after release, almost unfair media trials, and TV bans on mentioning Imran’s name have all added to these worries. These things have made people doubt that the upcoming elections will be fair and clear.
Over the years, the country’s “powerful circles” have made their presence known many times. However, experts have not only warned of the current wave, but also said that the political engineering going on now was worse and sneakier than ever.
They say that the problems caused by modern political manipulation put a long shadow over how fair the voting process was.
