Ijaz Kakakhel Islamabad
Minister for Information and Broadcasting Fawad Chaudhry on Tuesday said that the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazal (JUI-F) scoring big in the first phase of local body elections in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is “unfortunate” adding that such the rise of “religious extremist” would harm the country.
“Today was meeting of the federal cabinet, not a meeting of the PTI’s core committee. We will talk about this at a meeting for the core committee,” he said when asked about his concerns over the results of the polls.
When the reporters continued to probe him, the minister said that the reason for the ruling party’s failure in the polls was “clear”.
“When three to four candidates from the same party contest the polls in the same constituency, then they will inevitably lose the election. This is what happened in most of the
areas,” he said, adding that the party’s MNAs and MPAs were also not happy. “Each constituency needs to be managed, and we lost most of the contests due to these management issues,” he said.
However, this just proves that the PTI is a national party, he said, adding that the rest were merely “local parties”. “If the PTI did not exist then there would be no national party in the country.”
Talking about the JUI-F, he said that the party had ruined the education and finance sectors in KP in 2002. “It is unfortunate that, due to our mistakes, such a political party has been noticed by the people,” he said. The minister said that the rise of “religious extremist parties” such as the TLP and JUI-F would ultimately harm the country.
