PTI insists that its September 27 march on Islamabad will go ahead. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Sohail Afridi says the party will “forcefully exercise” its constitutional right to protest, while Barrister Gohar Ali Khan claims some 1,500 workers have already been detained. Meanwhile, Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi has answered with an equally unambiguous warning: if the march proceeds, the government will respond fully and will not allow the capital to be paralysed.
That confrontation is taking shape at a particularly bad moment for Pakistan.
The economy has only recently returned to 3.7 per cent growth after years of contraction and near-stagnation. The current-account deficit narrowed sharply in August, reserves have rebuilt and macroeconomic stability has improved. Yet inflation has climbed back to 11.1 per cent and the Middle East conflict has pushed oil, freight and insurance costs higher. Pakistan is recovering, but nobody looking seriously at the numbers could call that recovery secure.
Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb therefore has all the more reason to sound alarmed, especially when the Planning Commission estimates that strikes, road closures and sit-ins could cost around Rs 120bn a day.
PTI’s own recent history makes government apprehension difficult to dismiss as mere political theatre. The violence of May 9, 2023, damaged around 40 public and military installations across the country. In Islamabad alone, police later put the cost of repeated PTI agitations between July and November 2024 at more than Rs 1.1 billion, besides Rs 152 million in damage to public and private property. Furthermore, one policeman was killed and dozens of police and Rangers personnel were injured.
This is precisely why the distinction between protest and coercion cannot be wished away.
The Islamabad High Court has already affirmed the right to peaceful assembly while making equally clear that political parties cannot occupy highways, interchanges and public buildings or deprive other citizens of movement, work, education and access to hospitals. That is hardly an assault on democracy. It is democracy recognising that one set of rights cannot simply erase another.
The PTI is free to challenge the government and take its case to the public. What it cannot reasonably claim is a licence to overwhelm the state through disruption whenever legal and political outcomes go against it.Executive Branch
For millions already struggling with food, fuel and transport costs, survival means their right to earn a wage and keep a business open. Nothing else. Nothing more. Pakistan has paid enough for politics conducted as a siege. No party should be allowed to make the country itself the pressure point.
