Time to push the reset button in Punjab?

LAHORE: PTI leaders must have breathed a sigh of relief after their candidates won the election for Senate chairman and deputy chairman, winning back some lost pride for the party as well, but their celebrations wouldn't have lasted too long since they are already confronted with the next crisis. And that is the question of the most important province and the main battleground for PTI's next electoral feud with PML-N, Punjab, where discontent with the Buzdar government has spread into PTI as well.

So far the prime minister has resisted all sorts of pressure to replace Chief Minister Usman Buzdar. But now, after the Senate scare where the ruling party came within a whisker of losing electoral legitimacy, there are reports that PM Khan has at least accepted that 'fixing Punjab', so to speak, is the party's next number-one priority.

The party knows very well that Finance Minister Hafeez Sheikh's defeat in the crucial Senate poll owed, in addition to widespread corruption of course, to the fact that a number of lawmakers were unhappy with him because his handling of the economy had made life very difficult for the common man, which they never hear the end of whenever they visit their constituencies.

In Punjab, too, high prices and the general perception that the provincial government just lacks the ability and experience to deliver in a manner that the circumstances demand has now forced even senior PTI members to try and convince Imran Khan of the necessity of change in the province. So far the PM's heard none of it. But some of his senior ministers feel that he might slowly be coming round to accepting it now. Yet even as he does that, he's finding out that changing things at such a level, especially at such a time, is easier said than done.

The biggest stumbling block is going to be engineering a vote of confidence for whoever is going to replace Buzdar, considering how the party is split into many groups and the need to accommodate allies. There's also...