PESHAWAR: One month gone and Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf`s road show in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa continues unhindered with razor-sharp effectiveness, but diminished funfair.

The ruling party has no plans to call off its road protest, though it has spiritlessly scaled it down. Four out of the five camps with which the party began on November 24 the ongoing protest against US drone attacks have been ended.

`Ultimately, it is Peshawar that matters the most because everything (that goes to Afghanistan via Torkham border) passes from here,` said Dr Nadeem, provincial vice president of PakistanTehreek-i-Insaf.

However, reports from the other camps suggest something different.

They were reportedly wounded up after the party lost the steam to ensure workers` participation.

The presence of workers in the camps at Dera Ismail Khan and other places has been an issue difficult to overcome and, at times, a cause of public humiliation for the party in power.

Even the camp at Peshawar`s Hatayabad Toll Plaza has been a lacklustre affair for quite some days. Workers come late and go early. The number of supporters attending the camp is thinning.

However, a bunch of few party workers has done a job as hard as blocking road supplies to North Atlantic Treaty Organisation`s forces in Afghanistan for the past one month.

There is a general perception that PTI could not have laid the road siege and blocked the supplies for such a long time without the provincial government`s tacit support.

PTI rejects.`The government has no role (in disruption of Nato supplies),` claims Shah Farman, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa information minister. He said what the protesters had been doing, it was their right.

Legally, the provincial government,he added, could not stop the supplies. As a result, the party decided that the government would stay out of it, said Mr Farman.

Why Peshawar only? Why not Karachi which is equally important to Nato sup-plies? Why adding more salt to injury for a city that has the highest cost of doing business in the country? Dr Nadeem, when asked, said that after Peshawar the network of protest camps would be extended to other cities as well.

`We thought starting from here, because we have our (party-led) government here, we would expand from here, said the PTI leader.

However, Mr Farman has something else to tell. `We chose Peshawar because, number one, we had made a commitment before the elections, and, number two, the drone attack on Hangu (in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) provides a major justification for the party to hold its camp here,` he said.

There`s no politics into it, he added.

`It`s certainly easy here,` said Mr Farman.

Nonetheless, people opposed to PTI`s way of recording protest against US drone strikes see a weakness behind the party`s decision to choose Peshawar as the showground.

`He (PTI chief) knows what wouldhappen if they stage sit-in in a major city of any other province: they would be thrashed by the police and sent packing immediately,` said Khalid Aziz, former chief secretary of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Nauman Wazir, a major steel manufacturer from Peshawar and a member of PTI Professional Forum, is not impressed either.

`It (road blockade) shows a confused mindset,` he said. On the one hand, the provincial government, said Mr Wazir, invited foreign donors to invest in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and on the other it had put a blind eye to the siege of an important road. `This is not going to take us anywhere,` he added.

On their part, PTI`s leaders said that they were not afraid of holding protest rallies, on crucial issues, in Karachi and Quetta at a time when`things were scary`.

PTI`s rally at Lahore against inflation and price hike, said Dr Nadeem, was a latest example of its not shying away from holding protests in other cities.

`Peshawar`s protest is symbolic, we achieved what we wanted to and we plans to continue it,` said the PTI leader.