It will do Pakistan Tehreek e Insaf (PTI) little good to cry foul and dispute the result of the NA-249 by-poll because unlike Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) it did not lose the election by a few hundred votes but rather found itself in the embarrassing and humiliating seventh position. So while a recount may well swing the balance PML-N’s way, there’s practically nothing at all that PTI can hope to gain from such an exercise. Plus, instead of giving the party’s rather offensive mouthpieces the job of ridiculing other parties, as is PTI’s habit, it would be far more productive to dwell on the string of recent losses and what might be possibly done to turn the tide before the big election only two-and-a-half years away.
For it’s not just Karachi that has brought embarrassment to PTI. They also lost in Daska, Naushera, Wazirabad, etc, so it doesn’t really suit the moment for the ruling party to try and win sympathy for being allegedly cheated out of an expected win. It is clear that people up and down the country are rejecting the ruling party as well as its narrative. So this would be a good time to revise its anti-corruption and no-NRO mantra which has put everything else, including protecting people’s lives and livelihoods, on the backburner. It is equally, if not more, important for the economy to grow and jobs to be created, for which the government is solely responsible. If all it has to show after half its term is going blindly after everybody in the opposition, and even then failing to retrieve anything from them, that too at the cost of the economy and issues that matter to the common people, then such electoral verdicts is just what to expect as the party in power.
This is a lesson that PTI seems determined for some reason to learn the hard way. The PM also needs to think what the people that he’s going out of his way to protect are giving him and the party. Faisal Vawda, for example, who lied about his dual nationality was first given another lease of life in the Senate; something that nobody has yet explained. And the Karachi seat that he vacated, which PTI won last time of course, has now thrown PTI down to the seventh position in the by-poll. This ought to sound very loud alarm bells in the highest offices of the ruling party. It doesn’t have much time left to pull itself together. This is truly the last call for PTI. Nobody doubts Prime Minister Imran Khan’s honest or sincerity of purpose, but he needs to turn things around before he runs out of time.
https://dailytimes.com.pk/751345/last-call-for-pti/
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