Raja questions senior Marwat’s “competence” to speak on party affairs.
“PTI doesn’t sees Marwat’s statement as its policy,” says secy general.
Marwat tells Raja to mind his business or be prepared to face response.
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Secretary General Salman Akram Raja and senior leader Sher Afzal Marwat engaged in a war of words on Thursday, indicating the emergence of a rift within the former ruling party.
As per a report published in The News, Raja questioned senior PTI leader, Marwat’s “competence” to speak about party affairs after the latter raised a query over the former’s status as the party’s office-holder.
Both expressed views about each other in two different talk shows but from the same private television channel, showing all is not well within the party.
It all started, when Marwat was shown a clip of Raja’s remarks against him. In the clip, Raja questions Marwat’s understanding of the party’s policy matters, saying that only two or four party people are deemed capable of having the right to talk about the party.
“He (Marwat) is invited by different TV channels and daily he issues a statement, which has nothing to do with the party’s narrative or thinking. He does not comprehend the matters and every day says something,” said Raja.
When asked about Marwat’s statement following his meeting with PTI founder Imran Khan — where Khan reportedly said it was not an issue if the committee meeting was not facilitated with him and suggested holding three or four sessions of committee meetings — Raja downplayed the remarks, saying that he did not consider Marwat’s comments to represent the party’s official stance.
“PTI is a very big party and doesn’t consider his [Marwat’s] statement as its or Imran Khan’s policy,” the PTI secretary general said.
Reacting to the statements, Marwat directly asked the talk show anchor to clarify Raja’s relationship with PTI. When informed that the secretary general had been appointed by “Khan sahab” himself, the firebrand politician retorted: “Have you seen any notification? According to the party constitution, only someone who has contested the intra-party elections can be its Secretary General.”
Marwat went on to say: “If we flout our own party’s constitution, how can we talk about the constitution of Pakistan? He [Raja], who is talking about my understanding of party matters, can’t be made secretary general this way. I tried to remain silent, but he crossed the red line.”
The PTI leader advised Raja to mind his own business or be prepared to face a response if he continued to speak about him. He insisted that after Omar Ayub, currently the leader of the opposition in the National Assembly, resigned as PTI’s secretary general, Deputy Secretary General Shamim Naqvi should have taken the post.
He then asked the anchor if he had seen any notification bearing Raja’s signature. Marwat questioned what kind of understanding Raja was referring to, considering that the latter “stays in Lahore for 15 days and then visits Islamabad for just one day”.
He expressed regret that the PTI secretary general had made personal attacks, criticising “such statements” by him on national media.
“How can he — who was Nawaz Sharif’s lawyer in the Panama case, Khawaja Asif, and PML-N’s Nausheen Iftikhar against PTI’s candidate Asjad Malhi — taunt me?” he mocked.
Marwat also bashed Raja for discussing him when he should have been addressing the policies of the PML-N government, Nawaz Sharif, or the establishment.